Pihole receives no requests - home has no connection when pihole is set as dns

[mrondr]

Expected Behaviour:

Installation: pihole on raspberry os on a raspberry 1B
I installed pihole on a fresh install of raspberry os without any (apparent) custom configuration. Router-side, I have set the pi ip to be static (to 192.168.1.10) and after setting the router dns to the pi ip I would have expected internet to still work and the pi to receive connection requests.

Actual Behaviour:

When the dns is set to be the pi's ip, internet does not work and the pi receives no requests.

Debug Token:

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/9jv1r06qze

[yubiuser]

@mrondr

and after setting the router dns to the pi ip

How did you set the IP? Is it the upstream DNS of the router itself?
Because your router advertises itself und two public DNS servers via DHCP to its clients

   * Received 340 bytes from eth0:192.168.1.1
     Offered IP address: 192.168.1.10
     Server IP address: N/A
     Relay-agent IP address: N/A
     BOOTP server: (empty)
     BOOTP file: (empty)
     DHCP options:
      Message type: DHCPOFFER (2)
      server-identifier: 192.168.1.1
         lease-time: 86400 ( 1d )
      netmask: 255.255.255.0
         router: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 1.1.1.1
      dns-server: 8.8.8.8
      renewal-time: 43200 ( 12h )
      rebinding-time: 75600 ( 21h )

The clients will then choose one of those DNS servers as they like to answer their DNS requests.

Set PI-hole as the only DNS server distributed via DHCP (and dis/reconnect the clients from the network to pick-up the new settings).

Why should Pi-hole be my only DNS server?

Reduced Ad Blocking Capability The main reason you should Pi-hole as your only DNS server is that you will see increased performance in the blocking of ads. If you have two DNS servers (Pi-hole and something else), your network clients may not always query Pi-hole for name resolution. If a query happens to be answered from a non-Pi-hole DNS server, your block lists will not apply (since that DNS server doesn't know about them). All Queries Need To Go Through Pi-hole First Since other DNS se…

[mrondr]

I feel very silly now but this solved it:

@yubiuser

(and dis/reconnect the clients from the network to pick-up the new settings)

Basically what happened is that since when I reverted to google's dns everything worked without dis/reconnection, I did not try to dis/reconnect when I was setting the pi as dns. Sorry for that.

Now I see the query log being written correctly but websites are not loaded.

[yubiuser]

@mrondr

Now I see the query log being written correctly but websites are not loaded.

Then please generate a new token. So you basically can't open any website?

[mrondr]

Thank you very much for the help and quick replies, here's the token:

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

So you basically can't open any website?

Yes, exactly!

[yubiuser]

Still the same advertised via DHCP

*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Discovering active DHCP servers (takes 10 seconds)
   Scanning all your interfaces for DHCP servers
   Timeout: 10 seconds
   
   * Received 340 bytes from eth0:192.168.1.1
     Offered IP address: 192.168.1.10
     Server IP address: N/A
     Relay-agent IP address: N/A
     BOOTP server: (empty)
     BOOTP file: (empty)
     DHCP options:
      Message type: DHCPOFFER (2)
      server-identifier: 192.168.1.1
         lease-time: 86400 ( 1d )
      netmask: 255.255.255.0
         router: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 8.8.8.8
      dns-server: 1.1.1.1
      renewal-time: 43200 ( 12h )
      rebinding-time: 75600 ( 21h )

Please run from a client

nslookup pi.hole
nslookup pi.hole 192.168.1.10
nslookup flurry.com 192.168.1.10

[mrondr]

Here it is (with pihole set as dns):

nslookup pi.hole

Server:		192.168.1.10
Address:	192.168.1.10#53

Name:	pi.hole
Address: 192.168.1.10

nslookup pi.hole 192.168.1.10

Server:		192.168.1.10
Address:	192.168.1.10#53

Name:	pi.hole
Address: 192.168.1.10

nslookup flurry.com 192.168.1.10

Server:		192.168.1.10
Address:	192.168.1.10#53

Name:	flurry.com
Address: 0.0.0.0

I just found out that the portion of log you cite is slightly different when pihole is set as the dns:

*** [ DIAGNOSING ]: Discovering active DHCP servers (takes 10 seconds)
   Scanning all your interfaces for DHCP servers
   Timeout: 10 seconds
   
   * Received 336 bytes from eth0:192.168.1.1
     Offered IP address: 192.168.1.10
     Server IP address: N/A
     Relay-agent IP address: N/A
     BOOTP server: (empty)
     BOOTP file: (empty)
     DHCP options:
      Message type: DHCPOFFER (2)
      server-identifier: 192.168.1.1
         lease-time: 86400 ( 1d )
      netmask: 255.255.255.0
         router: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 192.168.1.10
      renewal-time: 43200 ( 12h )
      rebinding-time: 75600 ( 21h )
      --- end of options ---

Thanks!

[yubiuser]

All your nslookup look good - the device is using Pi-hole as DNS server and Pi-hole is blocking correctly.

@mrondr

 dns-server: 192.168.1.1
      dns-server: 192.168.1.10

This looks better, however your router still advertises itself as DNS server, too. If there is no option to suppress this, you should make sure Pi-hole is also the upstream DNS server of your router (WAN side). In that case DNS queries would go

Client -> router -> Pi-hole -> Public DNS server

---

Is everything working now?

[mrondr]

Thank you very much!

I see no option on to suppress the router advertising itself as DNS server so I'm now trying to figure out if there is an option to do this:

you should make sure Pi-hole is also the upstream DNS server of your router (WAN side)