Network manager breaks pi-hole

[Nickie_emp]

The issue I am facing:
DNS service not running and FTL offline

Details about my system:
Pi3B+ Raspbian Buster (10)

What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:
I need to make network manager working for EAP wifi to be working properly.
After installing network manager, the only way for it to work is to sudo apt purge dhcpcd5.
I believe though that pi-hole can't work without it. Is there any other way?

[DanSchaper]

Everything should work fine. You may break Raspbian by purging dhcpcd since that's how the entire OS is designed to handle networking, but all Pi-hole needs is a static IP address.

[Nickie_emp]

Hmm, I don't believe it is ok. If I try to repair my pihole, it reinstalls dhcpcd therefore it breaks the networkmanager again.

And then pihole still says DNS service not running and FTL offline

[Coro]

@Nickie_emp

If I try to repair my pihole, it reinstalls dhcpcd

This should be fixed in Pi-hole @DanSchaper maybe you can recognize the user intentionally uninstalled dhcpcd ? Maybe add a setting to setupVars.conf (DONT_INSTALL_DHCPCD).

@Nickie_emp

And then pihole still says DNS service not running and FTL offline

These may be false positives. Try

sudo service pihole-FTL status

and

dig google.com @127.0.0.1

on your Pi-hole and see if especially the second command returns a valid response.

[Nickie_emp]

@Coro

sudo service pihole-FTL status

I guess you may be right.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo service pihole-FTL status
● pihole-FTL.service - LSB: pihole-FTL daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/pihole-FTL; generated)
Active: active (exited) since Mon 2020-07-20 01:09:36 CEST; 7h ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 1802 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/pihole-FTL start (code=exited, status=0/SU

Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting LSB: pihole-FTL daemon...
Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi pihole-FTL[1802]: Not running
Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi su[1826]: (to pihole) root on none
Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi su[1826]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for u
Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi pihole-FTL[1802]: dnsmasq: failed to create listenin
Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi su[1826]: pam_unix(su:session): session closed for u
Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started LSB: pihole-FTL daemon.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ dig google.com@127.0.0.1

; <<>> DiG 9.11.5-P4-5.1+deb10u1-Raspbian <<>> google.com@127.0.0.1
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 27670
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com@127.0.0.1. IN A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
. 1301 IN SOA a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2020072000 1800 900 604800 86400

;; Query time: 69 msec
;; SERVER: 195.238.2.21#53(195.238.2.21)
;; WHEN: Mon Jul 20 08:37:15 CEST 2020
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 124

[Nickie_emp]

However, I also got to say that the graphics/graphs are not displaying anything.

[Coro]

@Nickie_emp

Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi pihole-FTL[1802]: dnsmasq: failed to create listenin

This is the problem, please check /var/log/pihole.log for the not truncated error message!

[DanSchaper]

To get that output, use:

sudo systemctl status --full --no-pager status pihole-FTL.service

[deHakkelaar]

And to prevent dhcpcd5 from getting installed so NM can take over:

Prevent Pi-hole UPDATE to install dhcpcd5?

Pin the package in APT: pi@noads:~ $ man apt_preferences APT_PREFERENCES(5) APT APT_PREFERENCES(5) NAME apt_preferences - Preference control file for APT DESCRIPTION The APT preferences file /etc/apt/preferences and the fragment files in the /etc/apt/preferences.d/ folder can be used to control which versions of packages will be selected for installation. [..] How APT Interprets Priorities P < 0 preven…

[Nickie_emp]

Here it is:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo systemctl status --full --no-pager status pihole-FTL.service
Unit status.service could not be found.
● pihole-FTL.service - LSB: pihole-FTL daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/pihole-FTL; generated)
Active: active (exited) since Mon 2020-07-20 01:09:36 CEST; 22h ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 1802 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/pihole-FTL start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Starting LSB: pihole-FTL daemon...
Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi pihole-FTL[1802]: Not running
Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi su[1826]: (to pihole) root on none
Jul 20 01:09:35 raspberrypi su[1826]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user pihole by (uid=0)
Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi pihole-FTL[1802]: dnsmasq: failed to create listening socket for port 53: Address already in use
Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi su[1826]: pam_unix(su:session): session closed for user pihole
Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started LSB: pihole-FTL daemon.

[Nickie_emp]

Oh cool, thank you for this!

So this changes :

Candidate: 1:8.1.2-1+rpt1

to

Candidate: (none)

And now I have to reinstall pihole? Or repair it?

[deHakkelaar]

@Nickie_emp

Jul 20 01:09:36 raspberrypi pihole-FTL[1802]: dnsmasq: failed to create listening socket for port 53: Address already in use

Probably NM runs its own DNS forwarding service for caching.
Which one ?

sudo netstat -nltup | grep 'Proto\|:53 \|:67 \|:80 \|:547 \|:471[1-8] '

[deHakkelaar]

@Nickie_emp

And now I have to reinstall pihole? Or repair it?

Purge dhcpcd5 again if want to have NM take over.
But you have to configure a static IP through NM.

EDIT: and probably best to run pihole -r and select reconfigure when all finished/up/running.

[Nickie_emp]

The below:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo netstat -nltup | grep 'Proto|:53 |:67 |:80 |:547 |:471[1-8] '
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1230/lighttpd
tcp 0 0 192.168.0.39:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 596/dnsmasq
tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 1230/lighttpd
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:67 0.0.0.0:* 596/dnsmasq
udp 0 0 192.168.0.39:53 0.0.0.0:* 596/dnsmasq

[deHakkelaar]

@Nickie_emp

tcp 0 0 192.168.0.39:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 596/dnsmasq

Above is the one conflicting preventing pihole-FTL to bind to socket.
Dont need the dnsmasq binary as dnsmasq is already embedded into Pi-hole's own binary pihole-FTL.
You can purge dnsmasq.

[Nickie_emp]

It was already purged and NM has taken indeed over.
And Under IPv4 Settings, under Address (optional) I have placed the Pi's IP/Subnet mask and the gateway of the router.

Question: I want to bridge this from Wifi to ethernet. Wifi connects fine and I wanna bridge my lan and give the wifi's internet connected to lan to a router. The address stays the internal to the internal network. However the gateway, should now be the IP address of Pi?

[Nickie_emp]

Stupid question: Will piVPN play nicely if I do so?

Interestingly, dnsmasq is not installed:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo netstat -nltup | grep 'Proto|:53 |:67 |:80 |:547 |:471[1-8] '
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 1230/lighttpd
tcp 0 0 192.168.0.39:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 596/dnsmasq
tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 1230/lighttpd
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:67 0.0.0.0:* 596/dnsmasq
udp 0 0 192.168.0.39:53 0.0.0.0:* 596/dnsmasq
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo apt-get purge dnsmasq
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package 'dnsmasq' is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded.

[deHakkelaar]

@Nickie_emp

Question: I want to bridge this from Wifi to ethernet. Wifi connects fine and I wanna bridge my lan and give the wifi's internet connected to lan to a router. The address stays the internal to the internal network. However the gateway, should now be the IP address of Pi?

Bridge pointers below:

WIreless Devices cannot use the Pi-Hole

Probably the devices on WiFi dont have a route to the wired devices or the router blocking traffic between the two. Can you ping Pi-hole, which I presume is wired , from a Windows PC connected via Wifi ? A traceroute from the Windows client ? tracert <PIHOLE_IP_ADDRESS> If you router doesnt allow traffic between the two network segments, another option is to connect Pi-hole to both wired and WiFi. If the wired and Wifi clients are in different subnets, assign appropriate IP's to the two int…

@Nickie_emp

Stupid question: Will piVPN play nicely if I do so?

I believe folks have gotten piVPN to work with Pi-hole.
Search Discourse here.

[Nickie_emp]

I tried to purge dnsmasq and it was not installed.

Also:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ apt policy dnsmasq
dnsmasq:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: 2.80-1+rpt1
Version table:
2.81-4 -1
-1 Index of /raspbian bullseye/main armhf Packages
2.80-1+rpt1 500
500 Index of /debian buster/main armhf Packages
2.80-1 500
500 Index of /raspbian buster/main armhf Packages

[deHakkelaar]

@Nickie_emp

Interestingly, dnsmasq is not installed:

Must have come with NM.
Search the net how to disable dnsmasq in combination with NM for your distro.