How do I use Pi-hole's built in DHCP server (and why would I want to)?

[vee_winch]

Yes, disabled IP v6 on router if it is enabled.

[pled]

Hi there, may be a stupid question, but if I activate Pihole DHCP server AND disable Router DHCP (because I am not allowed to change DNS on ISP router), then my Pihole server cannot restart (or at least is not accessible from network).
I guess I need first to assign static IP address to Pihole machine ? IS that correct ?
My Pihole runs on raspberry 4 (raspbian) side by side with volumio. What is the simplest way to achieve that ?
Thank you.

[yubiuser]

@pled

My Pihole runs on raspberry 4 (raspbian) side by side with volumio. What is the simplest way to achieve that ?

Raspberry Pi Documentation - Configuration

[pled]

Thanks, perfect !

[Situstarget]

Can I activate DHCP server on my Ubuntu VPS not Raspberry PI?

[226cenk]

The problem is that my pihole instance is hosted by Linode and is not local, my router wouldn't be able to locate it automatically. How would I go about doing this with an external server?

[DanSchaper]

DHCP uses broadcast addresses, it only works on the segment that Pi-hole is connected to directly. A router in between Pi-hole and the client breaks the broadcast domain and you'd have to use something like a DHCP helper or relay on the router to connect the segments.

A DHCP server located across a WAN link is a really bad idea.

[ticknert]

I have DHCP enabled on the raspberry pi running pi-hole in docker. Everything seems to be working correctly, though I do not have the router DNS server pointed at the raspberry pi.

So, to confirm, do I need to set the router DNS address to the raspberry pi IP address when pi-hole is running as the DHCP server?

[DanSchaper]

Shouldn't need to. What isn't working with the current setup?

[ticknert]

Pi-hole is working great! I just wanted to confirm that if using the Pi-hole for DHCP, I do not also need to configure the DNS server on my router. I asked because I don't know where the 'router responsibility' stops and the 'pi-hole responsibility' starts (devices 'physically' connect to the router but then the pi-hole does everything else?).

I didn't see it stated explicitly in the docs that if the Pi-hole DHCP service is enabled, then the Pi-hole is also acting as the server DNS automatically, and the DNS configuration on the router is not needed.

Hopefully this response here can help someone else with the same question. Thanks Dan!

[DanSchaper]

There's a tool in pihole-FTL that will show what your DHCP clients are seeing:

pihole-FTL dhcp-discover

If the DNS server IP is only Pi-hole then it should be fine. You don't want to see another IP or Pi-hole AND another IP.

If all of your clients are being addressed by DHCP and there is only the Pi-hole as DHCP server then the clients would be getting the correct leases.

[ticknert]

Oh cool, I will check that out! Thanks again!

[un-zero]

Just wanted to point out the excellent solution provided by this post. Just disabling my router's DHCP caused "No internet connection" on the router (and for the whole house). To fix it, in short:

• set the router's DHCP to a range of exactly one IP address: 192.168.1.2 -- 102.168.1.2 (or whatever your pi-hole address is).
• make the pi-hole DHCP's range above that one address.

Additional trick: to prevent clients from appearing as '_gateway' on the pi-hole, change the router DNS to e.g. 192.168.200.200 (or some other non-existent address on your local network). That way, the pi-hole's DNS is the only working DNS on your network, and all clients now reach to it directly (and thus, are identified correctly by pi-hole with their Mac and IP addresses).