Every month or so all my devices lose internet and the only way to connect them all back is to disconnect them from the DNS server that Pihole is running.
I set my Pihole to have a static IP but for some reason after around a month or maybe longer, it just fails. This has happened 4 times over the last while and the only fix is to essentially uninstall everything on my Pihole, disable it, and then reconfigure it from scratch again.
I’m not sure what’s going on so any help would be appreciated.
First thought: Is your PiHole’s static IP within the range of addresses your DHCP server hands out?
My Pihole lives on my server computer and so the DNS is the same IP address as that computer
Irrelevant, unless your pihole is running on your DHCP server. Does the server running pihole have a statically assigned IP that is within the DHCP range being assigned to other devices?
Static addresses should be outside of your DHCP range, ideally. If you can’t change the range, and assuming sequential handouts of IPs from your router among other things, you can try setting the server’s static IP to a bigger number.
The static address should be assigned from the dhcp server.
Assigning a static address on the nic is a recipe for issues.
Set up a static assignment in your dhcp server.
Hm interesting. Basically my server is a windows computer (ya windows is not a good server OS I know, was lazy and experimenting) and in the windows network settings I assigned it a static IP that was within my DHCP range.
I wasn’t aware you could set it outside the range but this makes sense that it should be outside of the range so that my router doesn’t give my servers IP address to something else.
As you can tell I’m not super knowledgeable about networking but your help is making things make more sense. I appreciate it!
Are we getting a repeat of the guy who’s wifi didn’t work because of a smart bulb?
Taking a look at your Pihole logs is going to be helpful. Also knowing what kind of device is running the Pihole software may also help.
I had Pihole running on a raspberry pi 3 years ago, and I had pretty consistent issues. I’ve run it on other hardware since without a problem.
It could be an issue with the SD card, if you’re using a raspberry pi. I’ve also read that the log file can grow large enough to cause issues with your Pihole instance.
So there are a number of possibilities.
I’ll have to take a peak at the logs. I’ve been running the server nearly headless but with this issue I cannot access my server over my lan so I’m going to have to physically plug a screen and keyboard into it later.
One last piece of advice: Pihole has great support. I’ve gotten a ton of answers and assistance from the Pihole Sub on Reddit. I don’t know if it’s still active since the migration away from Reddit, but you may ask.
I’d rather ask here and start building up the knowledge base off Reddit but you’re right.
I think I know my problem though (something I’m not able to fix aaaaa)
I ran it on a linux-based NAS as well as a Windows server. I don’t use Pihole currently, however.
How do you set the static IP for the pi? From your router’s DHCP server, or from pi’s network configuration?
I set it directly on the computer hosting Pi since my router doesn’t let me log into it.
Do you know if your router is acting as a DHCP server? Most do, and if you’ve set up the Pi as one without logging in and turning off your router’s, you’ve set up two conflicting DHCP servers, and that would explain your issues.
I’m assuming my router is acting like a DHCP server as it’s all on default settings and my other devices are handed an IP address something like 192.168.5.xx
I’m not able to log into my router anymore (tried all the ways: 192.168.2.1, 1.2, 5.1, etc) so you’re probably correct that with both dhcp servers up and running they’re probably conflicting.
There is a chance that the dhcp server on your router actually hand out the same ip address to other client, causing the pi to become inaccessible due to ip address conflict. Assigning the static ip address from the router will prevent this issue.
If your router is from your ISP, maybe you can ask them to give you access to the lan configuration options. ISP routers usually have two accounts, the full admin account which usually aren’t handed out to their subscribers, and a user account that would let their subscriber configure various lan settings.
At one point my router would let me log into it using its IP address but now it does not let me no matter what IP I type.
This all would have been much simpler had I been able to log in and set a static IP on my home server from there and disabled DHCP 🤪
I have a 5G CGNAT ISP router, but distanced myself from it by adding my own full access router connected via a LAN cable to my ISP one and using its wifi instead of the ISP’s wifi. This prevents the ISP router from stealing IP addresses (it can literally do whatever it wants to its IP ranges as long as it feeds internet through the LAN cable), and gives me full control over local network IP addresses (as I also am not provided any login to the ISP router).
Might be an extra NAT, but that kinda becomes moot being behind CGNAT that can’t open external ports anyway.
I used to do something similar by having another router and my main one in bridging mode but this new router from my ISP seems to be idiot proof and won’t let me access the login screen. A factory reset is in my future I think.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CGNAT | Carrier-Grade NAT |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| HA | Home Assistant automation software |
| ~ | High Availability |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| PiHole | Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole) |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #209 for this sub, first seen 11th Oct 2023, 11:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Give an alternative a go, see if you have better luck. There’s adguard home, blocky, and Technitium DNS for you to consider.
Alternatively, the window trick should work.
