Remote setup pre-configured Pi-Hole

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1

Please follow the below template, it will help us to help you!

Expected Behaviour:

[DNS is not resolving on network]

Actual Behaviour:

[I can log into the admin panel and see that the Pi-Hole is capturing DNS traffic and showing devices that are connected to that network. But I am unable to use a web browser to access any website.]

I send a pre-configured Pi-Hole to a friend hoping that I would only have to update the DNS settings in his router.

His network is in the 10.0.1.x range.
In my shop, I have a dedicated network for clients (using the 2nd LAN port on a Synology Pro router). I set the DHCP range on this client network to the same 10.0.1.X range as my friend has and did a new setup of Pi-Hole. I set the DNS address to 10.0.1.239.

After my friend connected the Pi-Hole to his network I had no problem logging into the Pi-Hole and cloud see that it already had captured some DNS traffic and was showing the iP addresses of the devices that are connecter to my friends' network.

However when I changed the DNS on the WAN port of his router I was unable to browse the web.
I also tried to solve the problem by changing the DNS server ip address in his iMac. etc etc. Nothing works.

Is there a way I can verify the network settings in the Pi-Hole or do I need to reset the Pi-Hole and do the setup while connected to his network?
If so can this be done headless via ssh?

What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Rogier

2

If you have shell access to the device, then you can try a pihole -r and choose reconfigure to re-set any of the configuration options you chose on initial startup.

3

Are you sure you are not just looking at older logs form your own test network?

Pi-hole wouldn't catch any DNS traffic if you just connected it to a network.
You'd have to actively configure your router to use it.

You were just referring to DNS, but even if Pi-hole was configured to act as DHCP server, devices on your friend's network wouldn't start using it before their leases expire, and even then you'd have to configure your router accordingly, or it would be a race between your router's and Pi-hole's answers for a client's DHCP broadcast.

If that's supposed to be the address of your friend's router, configured as a custom upstream DNS via Pi-hole's Settings | DNS: Upstream DNS Servers, then you closed a DNS loop...

In that case, pick one or more of Pi-hole's preconfigured upstream servers (to keep the router's WAN setting pointing to Pi-hole), or configure your router to distrubute Pi-hole as local DNS server via DHCP (edit: and revert the WAN setting to default, of course).

If neither is possible, go with PromoFaux's suggestion.

4

Thanks for your advice, I did that before in my office. But it required me to have the a display connected to view the UI to follow the setup.
Or can I do the configuration headless?

5

For sure you can. Working on the assumption here that it is a Raspberry Pi and you are not aware of how to connect to it over SSH:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/remote-access/ssh/

Apologies, of course, if you do know... not trying to teach anyone how to suck eggs!

Once you are connected to the shell, you can run any commands that you would run in the terminal at the physical device.

Also making an assumption here that you installed raspbian with the desktop options.

Edit: I might be wrong, however, unless you set up SSH on the first boot, you're going to need to be at the device physically to enable it.

6

On my own network (Ubiquity USG Pro) all I had to do was change the IP address of the DNS Server to just the one I set for my Pi-Hole. I also set the DNS on the the LAN and Vlan.
It worked instantly, its one of the few times there was in instant satisfaction of trying something new.

I tried all various combination on my friends network on his WAN and LAN.

I am not using the Pi-Hole as a DHCP server just as a DNS filter.

7

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