Pihole not blocking wildcard domains

Help
1

Expected Behaviour:

I'm trying to block ads using pihole... I've added (\.|^)amazon-adsystem\.com$ to block ads coming from all sub-domains of amazon-adsystem.com

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image981×253 11 KB

I've flushed pihole cache and even restarted the service :

# pihole reloaddns
  [✓] Flushing DNS cache
# systemctl restart pihole-FTL.service

However, queries to subdomains are still forwarded and replied to.

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image963×105 8.19 KB

I'm running on a Raspberry Pi 4, all clients get IP via DHCP on pihole, and dns server is set to the pihole.

pihole -d uploaded = https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/VVSUG3qd/

I have 25+ years of DDI experience, and I'm lost... pihole simply isn't blocking :confused:

2

The debug log shows your settings are correct, but you disabled the Default group:


*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Groups
    id   enabled                         name                             date_added          date_modified                        description
   ----  -------  --------------------------------------------------  -------------------  -------------------  --------------------------------------------------
      0    no     Default                                             2026-06-01 16:32:30  2026-09-16 11:42:33  The default group

When a group is disabled, all lists, domains and regex rules assigned to this group are also disabled.

Solution:
Enable the Default group.

3

Absolutely spot on, thanks so much!!

Weird as this was a new install (I've done a few now) and I hadn't changed that setting.

Anyway, all sorted now, much appreciated :slight_smile: