Unable to block host lookup by Amazon FireTV devices

Expected Behaviour:

I have two older FireTV devices (circa 2018?). These devices are constantly accessing the host "trace-server.prod-clustered.bugs.firebat.prime-video.amazon.dev". I'm trying to block this access using the rules below:

I'm running on a Raspberry Pi 3 w/ 1 Gig RAM, 24 Gig Free on SD card, Raspian, connected both wired and wireless. The device is dedicated to Pi-hole, running versions: Pi-hole [v5.18.2], FTL [v5.25.1], Web Interface [v5.21]. Other than this issue, everything else seems to me is working fine. The issue was present prior to the most recent Pi-hole updates.

Actual Behaviour:

The DNS lookups are being allowed and the devices appear to be successfully accessing the host.

Thanks in advance for any help!

It sounds like there may be a whitelist entry which is taking priority. What does this command tell you, run from the Pi-hole's command line?

pihole -q -exact trace-server.prod-clustered.bugs.firebat.prime-video.amazon.dev

While you're there, can you also please create a debug log and post the token URL here.

pihole -d

Thanks for responding, chrislph. Below is the info you requested. To my knowledge, I don't have any whitelists, but I'm new to the product so it's possible I do and just don't realize it.

pihole -q -exact trace-server.prod-clustered.bugs.firebat.prime-video.amazon.dev
 Exact match found in exact blacklist
   trace-server.prod-clustered.bugs.firebat.prime-video.amazon.dev
 Exact match found in regex blacklist
   (\.|^)amazon\.dev$
   (\.|^)trace-server\.prod-clustered\.bugs\.firebat\.prime-video\.amazon\.dev$
   .\.amazon\.dev
   trace-server\.prod-clustered\.bugs\.firebat\.prime-video\.amazon\.dev

The requested token: https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/enXqy1IF/

Thanks, that first command shows that there are no whitelist entries taking priority after all, which is good.

The debug log shows the problem. You have assigned the blacklist entries to a dedicated Group for Amazon advertising URLs, but there are no clients in that group. You do have a couple of Clients added, but they are both in the Default Group. Therefore those blacklist entries are not being applied.

To fix that, do one of the following. Either,

Delete the Amazon advertising URLs Group and just add the blacklist URLs to the normal Default Group. This is the default when you add any new rules. Use the Comment box to mention that they are Amazon advertising URLs if you want. Since there are only a few entries, this is probably easiest. It means the rules will apply network-wide without any further work needed.

or,

Keep them in their own dedicated group as they are now. Then in Clients make sure that all the clients, where you want these rules to apply, are added. Then used the dropdown and ensure that the clients are in BOTH the Default group and your Amazon URLs group.

With that done, those clients should now see the domain blocked, because they are in both groups, so they have both the Default blocking plus the Amazon URLs blocking. This approach gives more control, especially if you are adding more domains later, but it means you have to ensure that each client affected is in Clients and in the Amazon URLs group too.

Note that since your rules appear to want to do a wildcard for amazon.dev, you can achieve this by going to Domains > Domain > enter amazon.dev > Add domain as wildcard > Add to Blacklist.

This wildcard will cover that long domain plus any other amazon.dev domain. So you could then delete the other blacklist rules and just use this one. And since it's just one rule, that makes that first method the easier one, so you could delete the Amazon URLs group and just stick to Default.

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I appreciate you looking into this so quickly and providing a detailed answer. Give me a bit of time to digest your response and implement your suggestions. I'll chime back in when done.

Thanks!

A most excellent response! Thank you very much. I ended up creating the amazon.dev regex in the Default group as you suggested and got rid of everything else. Works like a charm and on top learned about groups. Again, thanks!

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