[Solved] Help Setting up Pihole Properly

Help
1

This is a separate thread because I will need some help and I don't want to further neco an old thread.

Thanks @Mcat12 for answering my question earlier.

Expected Behavior:

Found an old RPI3 I had laying around, fresh copy of Raspbian Lite, then installed the installation script from the main page.

Went through the prompts and set it to a static IP, and make sure to set it as static from my routers side as well. The IP I gave it was 192.168.0.2/26.

I did not want the pi to run its own DHCP as I have full control over mine. I only wanted it to function as a DNS server. Once I got the script installed I rebooted the pi so it would get its static IP from the router and set it as the sole static DNS server from my router, then refreshed the leases on my clients so the new DNS settings would take effect.

Actual Behavior:

Half the nodes on my network no longer showed up in the 'attached devices' section on the router and the pi does not show up with the static IP address I gave it. Cannot access the admin web interface. No internet access, even though I get a valid IP address from my ISP.

Debug Token:

I don't think this is a bug, I just think that I missed something somewhere and need clarification.

2

After further tinkering I was able to solve the issue.

  1. changed my DNS setting on the pihole to use Google DNS
  2. shutdown every client on network for 30 seconds
  3. rebooted pi as the only connected node
  4. then brought my nodes up one-by-one

I can now access the admin page and use the internet. My best answer for why this happened is that my nodes did not update their DNS cache and that it what lead to the weirdness, in addition my rpi failed to boot (rebooting fixed it).