After weeks of trouble free operation in the last few days my pihole has been crashing. After checking logs I found that the family windows machine logged into my pi via ssh about 20 mins before pihole stopped working.
I wasnt home at the time and the rest of my family wouldn't be able to do this. Is it possible that something on my windows machine is intentionally disabling pihole?
I was using the default pi password ( changed now )
In the pihole log it showed the list of domains that were blocked and allowed as expected. At the time of the crash there was a big blob of binary data in there then nothing. I restarted the the pi and the log continued as normal after the binary blob.
I've reimaged the pi now and am about to reinstall pihole from scratch. I wish I'd saved the logs now. I'll be watching the logs more closely