Pihole was functioning very well until it was turned off

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Hello. I did try searching for other similar questions already.

While nothing seems to cover this exactly, most questions are at a technical level which is not handleable by me.

In summary: When I set up my pihole, it was set up wrong. I trapped myself in my own pihole and it blocked every single address other than the pihole's own address. Even my router's own login page. So I just went through the pihole's interface via Putty SSH and just shut it down and went to bed.

24 hours later, I come back home, now it works perfectly well. Okay. Weird, but okay. As far as I could tell, it blocked everything the pihole should be able to block.

Well, now I want to enclose the raspberry pi in a box. So I shut off the pi from the interface (probably) and then disconnected the power to connect it in the enclosure.

I figure if it causes problems, I should just embrace it. I need to know how to fix it in the future anyway when problems come up.

After the restart, previously the ethernet adapter I was using would light up when it was connected to the pihole. Right now, doesn't matter how much I unplug it and restart, it won't light up. The pi zero's light is a solid green (in the past, would blink a lot). The ethernet cable had a light on it which would blink/light up. Now there is no light.

Biggest problem:
I cannot connect to my pihole via SSH with Putty either (raspberrypi.local). That host outright doesn't exist, despite the pi having power and being connected to wifi via ethernet.

Seriously I love this thing but for someone like me who is not a computer person, you can't imagine how profoundly difficult this is for me. I do not know the difference between DNS and DHCP. and apparently most people doing this stuff DO know. So know that you're talking to someone who truly doesn't get it.

I am forced to rely on all your help as I cannot troubleshoot myself, which by the way, thanks a lot of course.

The hardest thing about this is that it feels like I'm doing perfectly reversible and normal things to the pihole and not only that doing these things more than once, but each time a very different outcome happens. This makes troubleshooting incredibly incredibly difficult for me!

Can I solve this without reinstalling the whole god damned pihole? That would be a major headache and I feel like I can't just reinstall the whole damned thing each time something goes wrong.

Raspberry pi zero. I just used the regular raspberry imager to install things, then used the SSH stuff to get things working.

I have indeed made sure that the memory stick is secure.

Thanks!

2

If you cannot SSH into your Zero by its IP address, your issue likely is something network related.

This doesn't sound like a Pi-hole issue (and we couldn't even begin to troubleshoot Pi-hole.without being able to run commands on the Zero).

You could consider a step-by-step approach:
Start with learning the basics about your RPi, until you can successfully SSH into it, and rebooting and unplugging and replugging network cables will reliably return your Zero into an accessible state.

Only once that works, restart your Pi-hole installation.

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Thanks for your reply but I think you can understand that part of the difficulty is that explanations for what is going on start off by assuming I'm a Senior Product Engineer at Google.

Scroll down and look at suggested topics. I dun understand a god damn word. Not one guide, save for Tomshardware has been able to help explain this to me in simple english.

But yeah thanks I'll try to figure it out. And when you say IP address... does raspberrypi.local count as that btw?

4

No, an IP address looks like 192.168.0.1 or 2001:db8:0:1234:::1.

raspberrypi.local is an mDNS hostname, as can be glanced by the .local part (it is reserved for mDNS usage and shouldn't be used with DNS).

To be able to resolve such a hostname, all involved parties (i.e. the machine claiming that name as well as any machine or software that tries to resolve it) must support the mDNS protocol.

Pi-hole handles DNS.
mDNS is handled by other software, e.g. Apple's Bonjour or Linux' avahi.

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How can I resolve this right now then? I can't access my pi with SSH through putty.

6

Something is corrupted.
SSH is such a PitA for newbies:

DHCP tells devices what their ip address is. DNS is what takes a name (e.g. cnn.com) and translates it into an address.

I would start over and plug the Pi into a monitor. Watch a YouTube video that has a lot of hits; you are lost in the woods.

What is new in Raspberry OS is the default 'NAME' will not be "Pi" you will need to give it a name and remember it. You will need it when you get comfortable with SSH.

Set everything up using the monitor and the terminal (that black box with >_ in it).

That should get you going.

I do not even use SSH. I just change inputs on a monitor and do updates and configurations with the terminal (that black box with >_) the GUI and sudo raspi-config.

Good luck!

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GUYS LET THIS BE A LESSON TO ALL OF YE

IT WAS TOO MUCH OF A HEADACHE AND COULDN'T SEE WHAT WAS GOING ON BUT TODAY I WENT, MOVED IT,AND WAS GOING TO PLUG IT INTO MY NEW MONITOR TO SEE

TURNS OUT I HAD BEEN PUTTING THE POWER LINE INTO THE USB PORT AND THE USB (ETHERNET CONNECTOR) WAS GOING TO POWER. IT IS DARK IN THAT PART OF THE ROOM AND I CAN'T SEE AND SOMEHOW SOLIDLY FORMED THE MEMORY THAT POWER IS #2 AND ETHERNET IS #1

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