Manage DNS across many Pihole servers

[Steve_Gailey]

I'm working on a tool to allow me to manage Custom DNS across many Pihole servers. The idea is to be able to keep them in-sync whilst also allowing some to have different DNS. I'm probably about three or four weeks away from a working version. Is anyone interested in beta testing this.

Will be Web/gui based so will probably release as docker container to make deployment simple.

Not a commercial product - just for the community and to give me something to do... At this stage I'm trying to work out if others want this too or just me?

[buntspexxt]

Sounds interesting.
I'm willing to test

[Steve_Gailey]

Great - I'll post on here when I have something... Thanks.

[deHakkelaar]

Keep in mind that v6 is already in beta!

Pi-hole V6 Beta Testing

Originally published at: Pi-hole V6 Beta Testing – Pi-hole It’s no secret that we’ve been working on the next iteration of Pi-hole for quite some time now (Nearly four years!). You may have seen mentions of v6.0 floating around on our Github, Discourse, or Reddit channels. Today we’re looking to ask some of the more brave users to help us test and troubleshoot it Read first: Please do not run this if you are not comfortable with digging into any issues that may arise. That said, we wou…

Its an almost complete overhaul and some things working for v5 are completely different now for v6.
Below is popular for v5:

GitHub - vmstan/gravity-sync: 💫 The easy way to synchronize the DNS...

[Steve_Gailey]

Thanks. Good points I hadn't considered. I have taken a look at the V6 API which seems like a great improvement generally over the V5 API, but I don't see any custom DNS management endpoints so will have to keep a watching brief. I can probably add code to allow me to manage both V5 and V6 endpoints (once I have the V6 API) from the same tool.

Taking that a stage further there is no reason why I couldn't extend what I'm doing to cover non-pihole DNS systems also.

The Gravity sync is interesting but I'm not sure it gives me what I need, which is to manage several (potentially a lot) of piholes in a flexible way (allowing some to have different DNS).

I have made some progress over this weekend. I can now identify the changes needed on each managed or semi-managed pihole to bring it into sync with the main DNS database. I'm on track to have something ready at least by Christmas given work commitments.

[deHakkelaar]

@Steve_Gailey

but I don't see any custom DNS management endpoints

dehakkelaar@ph6b:~$ curl -s localhost/api/config/dns/hosts | jq .config.dns.hosts[]
"10.0.0.3 nas.home.dehakkelaar.nl"
"10.0.0.2 ph5a.home.dehakkelaar.nl"
"10.0.0.4 ph5b.home.dehakkelaar.nl"
"10.0.0.5 ph6b.home.dehakkelaar.nl"
"10.0.0.1 router.home.dehakkelaar.nl"
"10.0.0.6 xen02.home.dehakkelaar.nl"

EDIT:

dehakkelaar@ph6b:~$ pihole-FTL --config
[..]
dns.hosts = []
[..]
dns.cnameRecords = []

Add one with a --request PUT and remove one with --request DELETE.

[Steve_Gailey]

OK, I stand corrected - Didn't see the Documentation for that endpoint. I think I'll stay focused on the existing API for now. I can always add the V6 stuff in later. I'm hoping to get a beta out before the second week of December as I have a long business trip and won't be able to work on it for at lest two weeks after that.

[Steve_Gailey]

Well, here it is. This is at best beta level. It works for me (cold comfort I know). But some of you did say you'd test.

docker hub image

You will need a mysql database - I had to store the DNS records somewhere. I'll try to get some documentation written for it but it is actually pretty simple. The docker repository has instructions on how to run it. If you get past the database configuration piece you should be golden!

Keen for feedback.

Thanks.