Pi-Hole OS upgrade questions and other hardware considerations

mx2k · October 6, 2021, 9:12pm

Hello, it seems I run Pi-Hole on Raspbian OS / Debian Buster.
Should I consider upgrading to a new Linux release, since I think Buster is a older release, or is it not? Then again, never touch a running system.

I made some checks and maybe the experts can tell me what I'm running exactly and what to consider should I want to upgrade. See questions in regard to screenshot:

Do I run the most recent kernel?
During latest pihole -up update it throw info/warning about a newer available kernel, so when I checked today, I don't get any kernel update offered. Is that maybe a task that the unattented-upgrades package has taken care of in the meantime?
There's /debian unstable InRelease in the apt list. Should that be there and/or is it safe to remove the entry?
Looking at the --upgradable packages, they are /testing branch. Anyone know why, I think that should be /release or /stable or something.

Upgrade Considerations

I have some custom configs stuff like some conditional forwarding for arpa domain in some configs somewhere. No idea anymore if it was Pi-Hole or unbound or whatever ... Are those custom configs transferrable with Pi-Hole Teleporter?

Optimal pi.hole hardware
Currently I run Pi-Hole on a RasPi 3 Model B. Performance is good but over the years of using Pi-Hole the SD died more than one and had to be restored from backup.

Do you guys know if I can use a USB Stick as disk instead of SD-Card for Boot and pi.hole, or was that a RasPi 4 feature? Like in some easymode and not with endless config fiddling?

I'm inclined to build a new Pi-Hole server from scratch using a RPi 4 cos FTTH can drive the Pi3 to its limits and also just switching the RasPi form 1 to 2 to 3 by simply inserting existing SD card into new one is not the way to do I learned.

Network Integration of a newly build Pi-Hole and removal of existing one. Most important question

Basically, whats the order of things to do? The new RasPi 4 will have different MAC / IPv6 so my steps would be:

Set router to no longer propagate existing pi.hole as DHCP DNS, but the router itself to use its own upstream DNS. So I can use Internet when old pi.hole is taken offline.
Remove the existing pi.hole device from the network
Remove old pi.hole device entries from routers known network devices.
Connect new RasPi 4 to the network and start pi.hole and unbound installation process as per manpages.
Once the new pi.hole server is up and running, integrate new pi.hole as DNS server IP's into routers DHCP settings.
??? Profit! and stuff should work like before the hardware change. Then restore wanted stuff via teleporter.
During pihole setup, you are offered to set fixed IPv4, which I'll do again to 10.1.1.6 so it will be same IP is the old one.

IPv6 is the thing. I know the new Raspi4 will get DHCPv4/v6 addresses first before I get the chance to change it in setup, but there seems to be a way to also set a fixed IPv6 like fe80:2000::1 to easily remember it. This isn't offered during PiHole automated IP setup process. But I assume somewhere here may be a solution how to do that, so i you know one please link.

Raspi Hardware Offtopic
I am seeing bad pi.hole response times more often, as io.wait / disk busy. Is this maybe an early indicator of the SD-Card dying?

Thanks for your input and feedback as usual <3

jfb · October 6, 2021, 9:20pm

It's your choice. Stretch, Buster and Bullseye are all supported by Debian and Pi-hole.

Stretch is getting a bit long in the tooth, Buster is current and Bullseye is a brand new release in Aug 2021.

I would research the forums and see if there are any compelling features in Bullseye that you want enough to upgrade.

When the kernel is updated, you will want to reboot the Pi.

I would check the Debian forums for their advice.

If you run an export with teleporter, you can open the archive and see exactly what is saved. If you have the configurations in directory /etc/dnsmasq.d, teleporter will get them.

Here is the code for the teleporter function:

github.com

pi-hole/web/blob/50f43bde73d25211ac2c81e9092be67512611d2a/scripts/pi-hole/php/teleporter.php#L600


      
          	// Group linking tables
          	archive_add_table("domainlist_by_group.json", "domainlist_by_group");
          	archive_add_table("adlist_by_group.json", "adlist_by_group");
          	archive_add_table("client_by_group.json", "client_by_group");
          
          	archive_add_file("/etc/pihole/","setupVars.conf");
          	archive_add_file("/etc/pihole/","dhcp.leases");
          	archive_add_file("/etc/pihole/","custom.list");
          	archive_add_file("/etc/pihole/","pihole-FTL.conf");
          	archive_add_file("/etc/","hosts","etc/");
          	archive_add_directory("/etc/dnsmasq.d/","dnsmasq.d/");
          
          	$archive->compress(Phar::GZ); // Creates a gziped copy
          	unlink($archive_file_name); // Unlink original tar file as it is not needed anymore
          	$archive_file_name .= ".gz"; // Append ".gz" extension to ".tar"
          
          	header("Content-type: application/gzip");
          	header('Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary');
          	header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".$filename);
          	header("Content-length: " . filesize($archive_file_name));
          	header("Pragma: no-cache");

The RaspberryPi website will have this information.

What benefit do you hope to gain using a USB stick? That's pretty much the same memory as an SD card, but in a different format.

Also, make sure you are using top-quality SD cards, not the cheap brands or knock-offs.

mx2k · October 6, 2021, 9:50pm

Seems I was misinformed that USB has higher IOPS or better controller chips. Gotta check if the RasPi 4 can run a small SSD without external power supply.

Still going to rebuild the device with a new RasPi because I made too many experiments on the current one which lead to issues not easy to fix as total linux noob and the system has grown over the years.

Sometimes its just good to start fresh Also always good to have a spare device that works out of the box should something break down.

Other topics on my mind like backup of SD with dd etc is off-topic and best asked in other Linux forums.

Thx for your help! Topic resolved I guess.

system · October 27, 2021, 9:50pm

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