Feature Request: Provide DynamicDNS Service from PiHole Web App

[wspnut]

Hey all -

I want to post a feature request, but the plague-that-is-discourse blocks that from me (I can't express how much the onboarding process for Discourse forums is the world's biggest anti-pattern). Given I'm just trying to give back to PiHole, I figure I'll leave it here and let the mods determine if they want to move it to the right forum or delete this message.

Feature Request

I use the custom DNS entry for PiHole religiously - it's amazing for my Homelab. I was actually looking at the (soon to be coming?) API capabilities to see if I could implement a script that would allow me to basically host my own DynamicDNS provider. I have a number of different properties that all report dynamic DNS, and some of those I would really like to keep private.

So, instead of repeating the ask for the API, I thought I'd recommend another feature - PiHole being able to offer DynamicDNS capabilities. It's not a far stretch to expose a webpage from PiHole, either directly or via a reverse-proxy, that would enable common DynamicDNS services to update IP addresses in DNS entries remotely. I'd imagine it'd be as simple as creating a single page that, when the right query parameters are provided, updates a target DNS entry.

Of course I'd heavily recommend implementing authentication tokens, if not already implemented - but that's not a terribly hard thing to do, either. It could be a 1-day project for someone looking to get introduced to the Gravity database or other efforts.

Figured I'd provide my $0.002 if anyone thought this might be useful. Cheers, and - please - don't block users from participating via Discourse's bonkers method of onboarding, it's so frustrating.

[Bucking_Horn]

Pi-hole is a local DNS resolver, i.e it isn't meant to be publically exposed.

Besides, there is already software that specialisies in DynamicDNS.

In addition, you typically wouldn't self-host a DynamicDNS service - rather, it's the other way round: As your own server IP is changing, you rely on a DynamicDNS service which ensures accessibility of your server via a domain name that does not change.

[wspnut]

Thanks for the response - I understand my use case is unique. For the vast majority of people, yes, they are looking to have their homelab or PiHole available externally. As I mentioned in the OP, I have many different networks I would love to be able to manage using PiHole’s Local DNS Record capability.

In other words, extending PiHole’s local DNS overrides to support dynamic DNS. In my use case, it’s because I have several distributed clients that I would like to be able to easily manage with a hostname, which am currently doing with cloudflare via DynamicDNS. I would much prefer those to be non-public, so having PiHole be able to support that with their Local DNS entries would be of great help.