Please follow the below template, it will help us to help you!
Expected Behaviour:
[Replace this text with what you think should be happening]
Actual Behaviour:
[replace this text with what is actually happening]
Debug Token:
[Replace this text with the debug token provided from running pihole -d (or running the debug script through the web interface]
I tried to setup Conditional Forwarding and am getting tons of SOA requests (like over a thousand a minute).
I logged in to the IP directly (instead of the DNS name as suggested in the post by @asdfasdf Mar 19, but no change. (I'm using safari on a mac).
My router IP is 192.1681.254 and the Local Domain Name is Local (Which I think I should be using??? I have an ISP router and it is partially locked down. There is no domain setting under LAN settings (it has Telus as the domain under the WAN settings, but I think that's not what Pi-Hole is looking for... is it?)
My mac has Telus show up under network "Search Domains"
What did you wish to accomplish by using Conditional Forwarding? That feature tells Pi-hole to send any query for any host in the domain you chose, or PTR requests for the IP addresses in the block you entered, to an upstream DNS server.
Typically what happens is someone sets Conditional Forwarding to a router that doesn't know the answers the the requests. They also set the router to use Pi-hole for it's queries. So a client requests host.domain, Pi-hole sends that to the router, the router doesn't know and sends it to it's upstream (Pi-hole). Pi-hole doesn't know so it sends it to the router, and we have a big loop that floods everything until all the available electrons are used and the whole thing goes boom.
Here's what is says on the admin portal. That basically describes exactly what I'm trying to do... make Pi-Hole recognize the DHCP names instead of just IP addresses.
Conditional Forwarding
If not configured as your DHCP server, Pi-hole won't be able to determine the names of devices on your local network. As a result, tables such as Top Clients will only show IP addresses.
One solution for this is to configure Pi-hole to forward these requests to your DHCP server (most likely your router), but only for devices on your home network. To configure this we will need to know the IP address of your DHCP server and the name of your local network.
Note: The local domain name must match the domain name specified in your DHCP server, likely found within the DHCP settings.
My Router T3200M from Telus (Canada) had a spot to put the DNS server into the LAN & WAN. I figured perhaps I had created some circular arguments by pointing both locations to Pi-Hole and sure enough when I put the WAN DNS server back to the ISP's IP addresses, the spamming behaviour stopped.
I think I solve the spamming issue (see my post below) however Pi-Hole still isn't seeing the DNS names associated through DHCP (although my router does see the names).
If you know a way to make that work (without having to manually add it to /etc/Hosts that would be appreciated.