How do I show hostnames instead of IP addresses in the dashboard?

FAQs
44

Please update this FAQ entry and mention as another alternative to use the conditional forwarding setting.

I found this FAQ and thought that's it's only option to manage the issue via /etc/hosts or to use the PiHole DNS. Fortunately somebody pointed out I instead can use the DNS of my router when I configure conditional forwarding :slight_smile:

45

What about situation when I have pihole as Container on Mikrotik router? :wink:
How to see/define client names on pihole?

Thanks in advance

46

It depends on what kind of network driver you are using.

For macvlan (assuming you are using docker containers) it should be the same as for a physical host because pihole will have an IP in your local network. However from the pihole container there should be a route to the routers IP.

I think the conditional forwarding option should also work if the pihole is in a different subnet as you need to define the local subnet, domain and you router (DHCP server) IP.
What could be a problem is if you don't have a working route from the pihole container to the DHCP server IP (which is not trivial in case of macvlan for example).

47

I also wish there was an easier way to do this, editing /etc/hosts every time is going to get tiresome quickly, not to mention remembering to delete the entries too.. Brutal.. I am using OPNsense for the DHCP already

48

I have also setup conditional forwarding as recommended, but still no hostnames were shown.

Then I noticed my modem showing up in the dashboard of pihole as upstream server, it seemed pihole did forward some requests. So I have checked the log of queries sent to my modem (just clicking on the name/ip):

Type	Domain					Client			Status								Reply
PTR	  1.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa  192.168.0.120	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	DOMAIN (3.0ms)
PTR	136.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa	192.168.0.108	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	NXDOMAIN (16.3ms)
PTR	132.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa	192.168.0.108	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	NXDOMAIN (17.2ms)
PTR	131.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa	192.168.0.108	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	NXDOMAIN (18.8ms)
PTR	128.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa	192.168.0.108	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	NXDOMAIN (19.7ms)
PTR	121.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa	192.168.0.108	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	NXDOMAIN (20.4ms)
PTR	115.0.168.192.in-addr.arpa	192.168.0.108	OK (answered by getmodem.home#53)	NXDOMAIN (21.9ms)

As you can see from the log the modem only resolves it's own IP with reverse look-up, but not the other hosts. The same can be verified using dig e.g.:
dig -x 192.168.0.121 @192.168.0.1

So also check reverse look-ups with your modems/DHCP servers before blaming only pihole.. :slight_smile: