SOLVED: Admin page shows FTL offline (and not connection to API), but FTL is running

[MDM]

Funny story: I tried installing it onto a fresh VM again, just to see what would happen, and it's working now. What did I do different?

This time I used Ubuntu Server 16.04, instead of Ubuntu Mini 16.04. I don't know what's different between the two in the end, since pihole should install all the packages it needs, right?

Either way, pi-hole is working great now on my Ubuntu Server VM install.

[DL6ER]

Okay, so it seems to be an issue of the Mini version of Ubuntu? I'm just preparing a virtual machine for it...

[MDM]

Yep -- just the mini version of Ubuntu. No problems running pi-hole on Ubuntu Server.

[DL6ER]

I have not been able to install it on a ordinary VM (Virtualbox, enough RAM and disk allocated), so for now let's just accept that it works fine on a regular installation.

[MDM]

Thanks for all the help!

For anyone just seeing this, the solution is that pi-hole is not compatible with Ubuntu Mini, for whatever reason. Use the full version of Ubuntu Server.

[doronk]

I have the exact same problem but running on Raspian. Did a fresh install of the OS and a fresh install of pi-hole yet still have the FTL offline error and web ui says no connection to api. I do notice that this only happens when switching to the dashboard. If I don't use the web ui (which of course means I can't view the graphs), pi-hole runs with no issue.

[DL6ER]

@doronk

I do notice that this only happens when switching to the dashboard.

Not sure what you said here. Do you mean FTL is running correctly for you and crashes when you open the dashboard?

[rebroad]

same problem here (FTL not running on raspbian), it seems that both pihole-FTL and dnsmasq both want to use port 53/tcp, and obviously cannot.

[o3o3o]

I installed pihole in Linux with linuxtoy on an android phone.

I found the api curl -i http://192.168.1.106/admin/api.php?summary always return:

FTLnotrunning: true

Because $socket is false at here

I ensured the FTL is running with:

 sudo netstat -anutp|grep 4711

And I wrote a test script:

<?php
function connectFTL($address, $port=4711)
{
        if($address == "127.0.0.1")
        {
                // Read port
                $portfile = file_get_contents("/var/run/pihole-FTL.port");
                if(is_numeric($portfile))
                        $port = intval($portfile);
        }

        // Open Internet socket connection
        $socket = @fsockopen($address, $port, $errno, $errstr, 1.0);

        return $socket;
}
$socket=connectFTL('127.0.0.1');
$request=">stats";
fwrite($socket, $request) or die('{"error":"Could not send data to server"}');
?>

executed sucessfully with home user role.

But I cannot execute the script with www-data user in Linux deployed with linuxtoy on android.
So the problem is here, the script cannot be changed into www-data user. So the fsockopen aciton is failed.

Only If you installed Linux on android with linuxtoy, you can do this:

1. replace www-data user with android user in files: /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf, /etc/init.d/lighttpd
2. change owner of files

sudo chown android:android  -R /var/cache/lighttpd/ /var/lib/php/sessions/ /var/lib/php/sessions/   /var/www/html/ /var/lib/php/sessions/ /var/lib/php/sessions/  /etc/pihole/
 

3. restart lighttpd
   sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

---

Update:
You may just change the group owner of files and don't need to do step 1. (It is not verified, you can take a try)

sudo chown :android  -R /var/cache/lighttpd/ /var/lib/php/sessions/ /var/lib/php/sessions/   /var/www/html/ /var/lib/php/sessions/ /var/lib/php/sessions/  /etc/pihole/

[luser0]

hi am also running into this issue i used linux deploy to install ubuntu bionic can you please explain your solution in more detail as am new to this
i got the change owner part but that's pretty much it, do i need to run your script? (if so, how)