Redundant pihole v6 dns server dhcp setup

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1

I have 2 instances of pihole running on my network. One on RPi 3B+, the other on RPi 5. Both are running Core v6.1.4, FTL v6.2.3, Web interface v6.2.1. The primary pihole, running on the RPi5, is also the dhcp server for the network. I would like the dhcp server to issue 2 dns server addresses for redundancy.

Based on what I found online, I have created files in the /etc/dnsmasq.d directory, 02-pihole-dhcp.conf and 06-pihole.dhcp.conf. The contents of each file is the same, one line dhcp-option=6, primaryPiholeIP, secondaryPiholeIP. From what I've read, there has to be a space after the comma.

Not knowing the command to restart FTL or the dhcp server (everything I've found appears to be geared towards Pihole v5), I rebooted the RPi running dhcp.

The expected behavior would be to release and renew the IP address on a client and see 2 dns servers. However, in reality, I only get the primary dns server (from the PiHole running dhcp.)

Any ideas where I went wrong? Where would I find documentation specific to v6?

2

Did you renew the DHCP lease on the clients? Probably disabling and re-enabling the wifi connection should work.

3

Thanks for replying so quickly.

Yes, after restarting the PiHole, I released and renewed the IP address on the client. No change.

I also tried removing the 02-pihole-dhcp.conf file and removed the spaces after the commas in the 06-dhcp.conf file. No change. Renaming the 06 file to 02 didn't make a difference, either. Released and renewed the ip address on the client after each change.

4

To have Pi-hole read custom configuration files under /etc/dnsmasq.d/, you need to enable misc.etc_dnsmasq, see Custom dnsmasq configs not loading.

For single configuration lines, you could also manage them via Pi-hole's UI directly by adding misc.dnsmasq_lines, e.g. similar to How to set TTL for Local DNS records? - #2 by Bucking_Horn.

5

Thank you. This resolved (pun intended) the issue. I enabled misc.etc_dnsmasq, rebooted the PiHole, released and renewed the IP on my client and now I have both instances of PiHole showing up in my DHCP issued stack.

6

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