Pi-hole not working

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1

Hi, you must be fed up with posts like these, but honestly I tried everything to no avail. I used to have Pi-hole working fine on my devices for almost one year. But it seems that since I moved to Raspberry OS, I can't get it to work properly.

Expected Behaviour:

I expect my iPhone and my laptop to be almost ads-free when I switch the DNS to my raspberry IP address, but it does not happen.

Actual Behaviour:

I can still see ads and most of the time, Pi-hole is not catching any requests. Sometimes I can see lots of requests on Pi-hole dashboard, for example between 2 and 4 am (???).
My Raspberry Pi 3 is hooked to a 24 port switch which is directly connected to my Internet gateway (this thing: https://videotron.com/en/internet/equipments/helix-fi-gateway).
Unfortunately this gateway is restricting numerous things, including the ability to change the DNS servers... this is why I have to change DNS manually on each device I use.

Debug Token:

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/T2M8s8of/

Hope this helps find where the problem lies... Thanks!

2

Run from a client in your network that you suspect to escape Pi-hole, what's the output of the following commands:

nslookup pi.hole

nslookup flurry.com
1 Like
3

Why don't you let your DHCP serve IP addresses including the DNS address. PiHole can do that your you. Turn off DHCP on your current gateway.

4

Hi Bucking_Horn,

I ran the commands from my Mac, here's the output:

nslookup pi.hole
Server:		192.168.1.205
Address:	192.168.1.205#53

** server can't find pi.hole: NXDOMAIN

nslookup flurry.com
Server:		192.168.1.205
Address:	192.168.1.205#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	flurry.com
Address: 212.82.100.150
Name:	flurry.com
Address: 98.136.103.23
Name:	flurry.com
Address: 74.6.136.150

Does it help you understand what is going on?

5

I can't even do that, unless I enable Bridge mode on my gateway I guess. But I would then need to buy a new wifi router... I'm confident this would solve many issues I have including this particular one but I want to try and fix this before if possible :wink:

6

Your Mac claims it is using the machine at 192.168.1.205 as DNS server.
Judging by your debug log, that should be your Pi-hole.

But whatever is answering those DNS requests - your first nslookup proves that it isn't Pi-hole, as Pi-hole would have provided its own IP instead of NXDOMAIN.

Consequentially, your second nslookup result shows that flurry.com isn't blocked by Pi-hole (or else the IP returned would have been 0.0.0.0).

Run from the same machine as before, what's the result of:

nslookup flurry.com 80.241.218.68
7

Here you go:

nslookup flurry.com 80.241.218.68
Server:		80.241.218.68
Address:	80.241.218.68#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	flurry.com
Address: 74.6.136.150
Name:	flurry.com
Address: 98.136.103.23
Name:	flurry.com
Address: 212.82.100.150

Thanks for investigating! :slight_smile:

8

The DNS server at 80.241.218.68 that we requested to resolve flurry.com should have blocked resolution, as that is a filtering DNS resolver known to be blocking that domain.

Your answer suggests that the DNS request never made it to the public DNS server at 80.241.218.68, and thus implies that either your router or your ISP redirect your network's DNS traffic to a server of their choice (e.g. Netgear's C7800 has been reported exhibiting that kind of misbehaviour before).

9

Well I suspect the same behaviour is happening with my own router/modem combo, the Technicolor CGM4331COM also known as the XB7.
All I have to do is find the time to start fresh on my Pi, reinstall OS and Pi-hole. If it still does not work, I'll have to buy a new Wifi router and set my XB7 in bridge mode, Hopefully that will sove the problem...
I'll let you know as soon as I find the time to take care of this.

Thanks!

10

Are you with Videotron? (Helix)
I have the same issue...

11

Yes, exactly.
I wonder if Videotron (our ISP) is able to bypass any DNS setting we set on our own individual devices. If that's the case, how is this technically possible, and why would they do this?!

Still did not have the time to reinstall my Pi yet...

12

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