Trying to install Pi-hole on Banana Pi R2

Help
1

Let me start at the beginning. What is the best OS to install on the Banana Pi R2 for use with Pi-hole? I was able to install ubuntu MATE 16.04 but after I believe I installed Pi-hole, it acts like it has no DNS nor DHCP server. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there a another OS that I should install that would make it easier to install and configure Pi-hole easier? Thanks for the help.

2

These are the supported operating systems. The specs for your device say it will run Android, Ubuntu, Debian, Bananian. Raspbian is a Debian variant and Stretch is a popular option for Pi-Hole.

https://docs.pi-hole.net/main/prerequesites/

3

I appreciate the info but that doesn't state what will work on a Banana Pi R2. I tried to run Bananian. Won't boot. I tried to run Raspbian. Won't boot. But the prereqs don't include Android. Not sure why I would try Debian if I can't get Raspbian to boot. Like I said in my original post, I've gotten ubuntu MATE to run but it acts like it doesn't have the software to be a DNS nor DHCP server.

Is this the right forum to post in? I feel like I'm trying to get help from 2 communities in one place and I'm not sure I can get it.

4

I would look for additional help on the Banana Pi forums.

5

Here's the issue I'm running into. It looks like I've got everything installed but it states

Failed to start pihole-FTL.service: Unit pihole-FTL.service not found.

6

Do you have the output from the installer?

cat /etc/pihole/install.log

7 
[✓] Checking for user 'pihole'
  [✓] Installing scripts from /etc/.pihole

  [i] Installing configs from /etc/.pihole...
  [i] Existing dnsmasq.conf found... it is not a Pi-hole file, leaving alone!
  [✓] Copying 01-pihole.conf to /etc/dnsmasq.d/01-pihole.conf

  [i] Installing blocking page...
  [✓] Creating directory for blocking page, and copying files
  [✗] Backing up index.lighttpd.html
      No default index.lighttpd.html file found... not backing up

  [✓] Installing sudoer file

  [✓] Installing latest Cron script

  [✓] Installing latest logrotate script

  [i] FTL Checks...

  [✓] Detected ARM-hf architecture (armv7+)
  [i] Checking for existing FTL binary...
  [i] Latest FTL Binary already installed (v4.1.2). Confirming Checksum...
  [i] Checksum correct. No need to download!
  [✓] man pages installed and database updated
8

from the looks of this it appears FTL has been installed but not as a service.

try
sudo service pihole-FTL start

if im right it will return an error but it might help us diagnose also can you run a debug using pihole -d

9

It did not return an error. It did not return anything. I will try to copy and paste the results from the debug somewhere else so it will be easier to read.

10

you can just upload the debug and paste the token provided at the end

13

token is bnwi28omzc

14

from your log it looks like a lot of files are missing which would cause your issues.

try resetting /etc/resolv.conf from 127.0.0.1 to your preferred DNS then do the following for me
pihole uninstall
sudo rm -rf /etc/.pihole/
sudo rm -rf /etc/pihole/
then rerun the install command using sudo

15

My personal suggestion is Armbian Stretch Bananapi R2 – Armbian I'm running that distribution on my installs with NanoPi gear and I have not run in to any problems. Might need to update the prerequisite documents to list Armbian as supported.

16

Already tried that. Banana Pi R2 won't boot that.

17

Then what OS are you running, and do you have a link to the download?

18

ubuntu MATE v16.04

19

There's no way for us to support that. We don't have the hardware or software to be able to attempt an install. You may get some assistance from the forum members here, but officially that's an unsupported configuration.

1 Like
20

So what hardware that provides gigabyte bandwidth that can be used a DNS server is supported?

22

There's a couple of things to consider:

The Pi-hole is not a proxy. We only handle DNS traffic only, gigabit makes no difference in this case, 100Mbit/s would be overkill even with a thousand clients hammering the server.

SBCs are not the only supported platform. Virtual Private Servers, cloud (Digital Ocean/GCP/Vultr), home servers (x86_64), even Docker installs. The hardware requirements are very minimal. 1G RAM / 1 vCPU / 20 Gig drive space.

Edit: Some people get things down to 512M RAM and have had no problems.

23

My concern isn't hardware, it's bandwidth. There's no point of me using Pi-hole if it can't handle my bandwidth. 136 Mb/s.