pihole-FTL is working, but webmin says the service is not running

[darkness2k]

Hi all,

This is my first post - but I've recently deployed Pi-hole as my DHCP and DNS service for home.
I've also enabled this new FTLDNS option.

Some feed back - pihole-FTL is working, but webmin says the service is not running.
[USER@SERVER ~]# systemctl status pihole-FTL
● pihole-FTL.service - LSB: pihole-FTL daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/pihole-FTL; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Wed 2018-03-28 19:51:33 BST; 4min 50s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)

Also, and I don't know if this is expected, but running pihole -up now displays an error trying to update FTL: -

[USER@SERVER ~]# sudo pihole -up
[i] Checking for updates...
[i] Pi-hole Core: up to date
[i] FTL: update available

[i] FTL out of date

[i] FTL Checks...
[i] Detecting architecture...
[eK [✓] Detected x86_64 architecture
[i] Checking for existing FTL binary...
[i] Downloading and Installing FTL...transferred...
[eK [✓] Downloading and Installing FTL

fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/pi-hole/AdminLTE.git/': Could not resolve host: github.com
[i] Web Interface: up to date

[i] FTL version is now at
[i] Starting pihole-FTL service...
[eK [✓] Starting pihole-FTL service
[i] Enabling pihole-FTL service to start on reboot...
[eK [✓] Enabling pihole-FTL service to start on reboot

[jacob.salmela]

Please send us the token generated by

pihole -d

or do it through the Web interface:

How do I debug my Pi-hole installation?

Method 1: Generate a debug token via the Web interface Log in to your Pi-hole's Web interface Navigate to Tools > Generate debug log Click the Generate debug log button Send us the debug token [debug] Method 2: Use the command line to generate a debug token Login into your Pi-hole's command line Enter pihole -d Provide us with the debug token that is generated after the debug script completes Alternative: Securely sending us additional information Preferred Method If there is additi…

[darkness2k]

Thanks for your assistance Jacob.

My debug code is: pptd17iasx

[jacob.salmela]

What does systemctl status dnsmasq return?

[darkness2k]

@jacob.salmela

systemctl status dnsmasq

● dnsmasq.service - dnsmasq - A lightweight DHCP and caching DNS server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/dnsmasq.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /run/systemd/generator/dnsmasq.service.d
└─50-dnsmasq-$named.conf, 50-insserv.conf-$named.conf
Active: inactive (dead)

[darkness2k]

I'm not seeing the same FTL download issue now after upgrading to: -
Pi-hole Version vDev (FTLDNS, v3.2.1-148-g82d5afe) Web Interface Version vDev (FTLDNS, v3.2.1-121-gd921263) FTL Version vDev (FTLDNS, vDev-003371f)

Webmin still sees the service as not running though. I've gone through the service and manually done the check myself and I get this as the result (when it is running): -
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
42258 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/bin/pihole-FTL

All I can assume is Webmin isn't able to do part of the check (permissions?)... not sure.

[RamSet]

did you change /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 localhost into something else than localhost?

[darkness2k]

No, that is the first line in my hosts file.

127.0.0.1 localhost

[RamSet]

@DL6ER asked me in a diferent post:

Status - DNS service not running but it actually runs - #12 by DL6ER

What does that command return ?

[darkness2k]

"DNS service is running"

[RamSet]

and under Setting / System, you don't see the FTL info like this:

[darkness2k]

No, I do. It's all working. Just the checks for it (at least via webmin) are suggesting it is not running.

In webmin, When I try and "start" (not restart) I get: -
'Stopped

FTL started!'

If I click "status" I get: -
Executing /etc/init.d/pihole-FTL status ..
/etc/init.d/pihole-FTL: line 78: status: command not found

[darkness2k]

OK I've fixed that line 78 error by adding: -
Line14: . /lib/lsb/init-functions

And replacing line 79
from: status pihole-FTL
to: status_of_proc pihole-FTL

[RamSet]

I replaced the code at line 78 with this:

    if ps -p "$(get_pid)">/dev/null 2>&1 ; then
    echo "FTLDNS is Active"
    else
    echo "FTLDNS is not active"
    fi
    ;;

I don't know if that will work in your case.

I can confirm though that asking the status via /etc/init.d/pihole-FTL was broken on my side too.

[DL6ER]

I'm aware of this problem and have a rewrite of the service file from init.d to systemd planned for the near future (ideally this weekend, but it seems that the weather might be too good for this goal ).

@darkness2k

OK I’ve fixed that line 78 error by adding: -

Line14: . /lib/lsb/init-functions

This is not always available, we had it in there sometime > 1 year ago and it wasn't found on most user's systems. As I said, we're aware of that init.d scripts are ancient by now, but we needed them as FTL started back on Debian Wheezy.

If we find a good solution together that fixes our current init.d script - good. If we are able to upgrade to a systemd unit with Pi-hole v4.0 - even better.

[darkness2k]

Thanks DL6ER - not a problem, enjoy the weather if you can

[DL6ER]

Despite nice weather today (sunny, 22°C), I finished coding the systemd unit. More details can be found here:

Install either init.d script or systemd unit depending on used init