Web interface view own client or router fails

jeroenb42 · January 2, 2019, 10:31pm

On the web interface there is a list of top clients. As expected, my laptop is in there (it is actually at #1). For some reason my router is on there too but I don't expect it to do queries itself and definitely not rank as #2. So I wanted to look at the calls it does. Clicked on the link to go to:
http://mypihole/admin/queries.php?client=192.168.1.1
and I get "An unknown error occured while loading the data."
Not what I expected especially since it is ranked as I said as #2. The odd thing is that the laptop I am using also gives the same error.
Maybe it's related to the volume, I don't know. #1 has 37k request, #2 has 15k requests. Both don't show up. #3 has 10k requests and that does load, I tried loading on an iPad and the same problem. #3 loads but the #1 and #2 don't.

debug token:
vunzbcxksa

jfb · January 2, 2019, 10:35pm

Can you post a screen shot of what you are seeing on your dashboard? You can paste the images directly into a reply.

jeroenb42 · January 2, 2019, 10:47pm

jfb · January 2, 2019, 10:54pm

Restart FTL - either from the web admin GUI ( settings > system > restart DNS resolver) or from the terminal with

sudo service pihole-FTL restart

Then clear your browser cache, restart the browser and reload the page.

jeroenb42 · January 3, 2019, 2:16pm

Just did that and still have the same problem as in the screen shot.

jfb · January 3, 2019, 3:01pm

What are the outputs of the following commands - looking for problems reading from the long term database

echo ">stats" | nc localhost 4711

ls -l -h /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.db

journalctl -u lighttpd | tail -n40

DL6ER · January 4, 2019, 10:07pm

Does the Query Log work when you use the link on the left-hand side panel (open without any predefined client filtering)?

jeroenb42 · January 8, 2019, 7:44pm

Sorry for late reply. I tried the Query Log and that works

echo ">stats" | nc localhost 4711

domains_being_blocked 136434
dns_queries_today 129220
ads_blocked_today 9775
ads_percentage_today 7.564619
unique_domains 3831
queries_forwarded 96470
queries_cached 22975
clients_ever_seen 34
unique_clients 32
dns_queries_all_types 129220
reply_NODATA 2642
reply_NXDOMAIN 113
reply_CNAME 27904
reply_IP 29209
privacy_level 0
status enabled
---EOM---

ls -l -h /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.db

-rw-r--r-- 1 pihole pihole 59M Jan 8 19:43 /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.db

journalctl -u lighttpd | tail -n40

Jan 08 19:36:03 pihole sudo[709]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:36:32 pihole sudo[727]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:36:32 pihole sudo[727]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:36:32 pihole sudo[727]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:36:38 pihole sudo[746]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:36:38 pihole sudo[746]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:36:38 pihole sudo[746]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:37:02 pihole sudo[791]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:37:02 pihole sudo[791]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:37:02 pihole sudo[791]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:38:01 pihole sudo[874]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:38:01 pihole sudo[874]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:38:01 pihole sudo[874]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:38:01 pihole sudo[892]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:38:01 pihole sudo[892]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:38:01 pihole sudo[892]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:39:01 pihole sudo[919]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:39:01 pihole sudo[919]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:39:01 pihole sudo[919]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:40:02 pihole sudo[999]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:40:02 pihole sudo[999]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:40:02 pihole sudo[999]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:41:03 pihole sudo[1019]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:41:03 pihole sudo[1019]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:41:03 pihole sudo[1019]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:41:29 pihole sudo[1037]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:41:29 pihole sudo[1037]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:41:29 pihole sudo[1037]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:41:39 pihole sudo[1069]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:41:39 pihole sudo[1069]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:41:39 pihole sudo[1069]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:42:01 pihole sudo[1083]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:42:01 pihole sudo[1083]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:42:01 pihole sudo[1083]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:43:01 pihole sudo[1139]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:43:01 pihole sudo[1139]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:43:01 pihole sudo[1139]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jan 08 19:44:02 pihole sudo[1157]: www-data : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/var/www/html/admin ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/pihole status web
Jan 08 19:44:02 pihole sudo[1157]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jan 08 19:44:02 pihole sudo[1157]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root

DL6ER · January 8, 2019, 8:15pm

That's quite an impressive number (read as in: an awful lot) and the error you're seeing is to be expected in case your Pi-hole is set up on a low-power device. We made all efforts to provide the best service on such devices but when it comes to serving the frontend, things are certainly limited as we have to pipe everything though PHP at this time. A new API (which greatly improved performance) is in the works, but it will still take some time until it will get integrated into the regular releases of Pi-hole.

What kind of device do you run your Pi-hole on? Note that the link from the navigation bar will only open the most recent 100 queries and, hence, can be displayed without having the API run into a timeout as you're seeing with the >15k clients.

jeroenb42 · January 11, 2019, 2:36pm

It's running on a Pi 3B. I also thought that the number was way too high which is what I was trying to figure out.

I have not solved it yet but have managed to find out more. The high number of requests come from my laptop which is trying to find it's office domain, which is not available at home. It sends out SRV requests quite often and periodically. These account for the high number of requests. Since they are SRV requests, they are not covered in the Windows hosts file but rather in the lmhosts file which I have not toyed with before.

Interestingly enough, the pi-hole does not put the requests on the blocked domains even though I have a wildcard set up for any request to that domain. "A" requests are blocked but "SRV" requests aren't.

Bottomline, it does not seem like a pi-hole problem but more a load problem. Nevertheless, when I solve this, I will post what I did hear anyway.

DL6ER · January 11, 2019, 2:59pm

SRV domains cannot transport information about where to find advertisements, hence we don't block them.

system · February 1, 2019, 2:59pm

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