Expected Behaviour:
Until some point recently the dashboard worked correctly and i could go to 192.168.1.253/admin and I could access the dashboard, I'm not sure exactly when it happened but now I just get a connection refused error when i try and connect. I've connected perfectly fine via ssh so I know for a fact that the IP is correct and the rest of pi hole is running normally
- Probably raspberry pi os, i'm not 100% sure as it's a very old install that has been updated since
- raspberry pi 2
Actual Behaviour:
Currently I just get a connection refused error when trying to access the web dashboard but the rest of the web ui works fine
Replace this text with what is actually happening
Debug Token:
https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/cOsGYkH0/
your debug log shows an issue with the certificate:
2026-08-05 20:03:38.276 BST [626/T665] ERROR: Cannot parse certificate: Error code -8576
2026-08-05 20:03:38.277 BST [626/T665] WARNING: SSL/TLS certificate /etc/pihole/tls.pem does not match domain pi.hole!
2026-08-05 20:03:38.284 BST [626/T665] INFO: Using SSL/TLS certificate file /etc/pihole/tls.pem
2026-08-05 20:03:38.285 BST [626/T665] ERROR: Start of webserver failed! Web interface will not be available!
You can delete the certificate files and restart Pi-hole to fix this.
Pi-hole will recreate the certificates.
Use these commands:
sudo rm /etc/pihole/tls.crt, /etc/pihole/tls.pem and /etc/pihole/tls_ca.crt
sudo systemctl restart pihole-FTL.service
That did it, thank you very much. I wonder what broke the certificate though
Maybe you changed something (like server hostname) and the certificate is not matching anymore.
Or maybe the certificate file got corrupted. In this case, if it happens again, please check or SD card and replace it, if needed.
hmm, i don't think I've ever changed the hostname. I've almost always accessed it via the IP address so i've not had any need to set it. I did have one time recently where the power got yanked out of it, maybe that did it. But yeah, i'll keep an eye on it, the SD card is also pretty old at this point
If you only access via IP and don't need to access using https, then you can simply remove the secure ports and only use port 80:
port = "80o,[::]:80o"