Setting up Pi-hole

maj · 2 Mar 2020 at 08:34

I now have Vodafone as ISP and their router allows the DNS server to be changed. However if I manually set the DNS to be my pi-hole address in DNS settings I get no internet. DHCP is OFF and DNS is ON in pi-hole admin config. If I set DNS to auto config I can ping google (and browse web) but as soon as I put pihole as DNS server I can't do either.

What am I doing wrong?

Deleted member 77746 · 2 Mar 2020 at 10:05

@maj

> Give us an output of ipconfig /all
> Give us your pihole settings
> Give is your router settings

maj · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:32

mrbell1984 said:
@maj

> Give us an output of ipconfig /all
> Give us your pihole settings
> Give is your router settings

This is with DNS set to my pi-hole IP in router:

Deleted member 77746 · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:35

What's 192.168.1.4? your pi-hole? just try Google ECS for the upstream DNS. Your network should work no problem with them settings.

maj · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:40

mrbell1984 said:
What's 192.168.1.4? your pi-hole? just try Google ECS for the upstream DNS. Your network should work no problem with them settings.

Yeah that's my pi-hole. Just tried changing to Google as upstream but no joy (had to revert back to automatic DNS to post this).

Deleted member 77746 · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:41

maj said:
Yeah that's my pi-hole. Just tried changing to Google as upstream but no joy (had to revert back to automatic DNS to post this).

what's pihole hosted on?

maj · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:44

mrbell1984 said:
what's pihole hosted on?

CentOS 7 VM.

Armageus · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:45

It's worth setting both the primary and secondary to point to the same address (rather than leaving blank), have had it with some routers/devices that don't respect a blank dns entry

maj · 2 Mar 2020 at 13:48

Armageus said:
It's worth setting both the primary and secondary to point to the same address (rather than leaving blank), have had it with some routers/devices that don't respect a blank dns entry

Was worth a try but sadly the router doesn't allow me to have it in twice, as both primary and secondary.

Deleted member 77746 · 2 Mar 2020 at 15:09

maj said:
CentOS 7 VM.

give us the ifconfig of your centos install plz. You haven't got the firewall turned on at all have you on centos?

maj · 2 Mar 2020 at 17:43

mrbell1984 said:
give us the ifconfig of your centos install plz. You haven't got the firewall turned on at all have you on centos?

Think I'm sorted now. The gateway on CentOS was wrong as it was configured for the gateway before I moved ISP. Everything seems to be working now.

Will have to check the other VMs that I have now that I know what it is. Thanks for the help.

maj · 11 Mar 2020 at 07:17

So since setting DNS as my pihole in router I noticed that the only client reporting to pihole was the router itself. Whilst pihole is working in the intended way I do like to know what a specific device is trying to get onto (preferably by its hostname).

Presumably this is my setup:

Device -> router -> pihole -> internet

I found a suggestion online to turn off DNS/DHCP on the router, enable it on pihole instead and have the upstream dns as the router. This is similar to how it was configured before I was able to manually specific a DNS server in router settings. Whilst I know that way works I'd rather just have pihole doing DNS rather than DHCP as well.

I thought I'd try setting DNS as pihole in the router but then putting conditional forwarding on to point back to my router. This just results in the router being the only client talking to pihole.

Is there a right way to do what I'm trying to achieve?

Mujja · 11 Mar 2020 at 07:52

^^^

On your clients from the first screenshot the Router is set as DNS. All queries go to the router and are forwarded on to the Pi-Hole.

On your DHCP server change the client DNS to go directly to Pi-Hole.

Armageus · 11 Mar 2020 at 08:19

maj said:
I thought I'd try setting DNS as pihole in the router but then putting conditional forwarding on to point back to my router. This just results in the router being the only client talking to pihole.

Not sure why you need conditional forwarding back to the router?

maj said:
Is there a right way to do what I'm trying to achieve?

Should be as easy as setting the Pihole DNS as the DNS address given out by the Routers DHCP Server.

I think the biggest stumbling block in your setup is your Vodafone router. From the above screenshots, I'm not sure that DNS page on the router is actually the one that affects DHCP, looks more like what DNS server should the router use for internet queries (in which case setting it to Auto for ISP provided, or 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 for Google DNS).

If you could post a screenshot of the LAN and/or DHCP pages from the Router might help.

What you want is definitely possible, as it's how my setup at home works.

Mujja · 11 Mar 2020 at 09:29

Armageus said:
I think the biggest stumbling block in your setup is your Vodafone router. From the above screenshots, I'm not sure that DNS page on the router is actually the one that affects DHCP, looks more like what DNS server should the router use for internet queries (in which case setting it to Auto for ISP provided, or 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 for Google DNS).

ipconfig /all shows his windows client is using the router as the DNS and now the router is forwarding queries to the Pi-hole. As you say he'll need to make changes on the DHCP page to point the clients directly to the Pi-Hole.

With the current setup Pi-hole is working but he doesn't see queries from individual clients. Seeing individual clients in the logs is more useful than just the router but you can't block domains to individual clients, domains are blocked for all or none.

maj · 11 Mar 2020 at 17:43

Thanks for the help so far.

Here's my DHCP settings. Everything is set as it is by default:

And I did wonder why despite setting DNS as pihole in router, why it is still 1.1 in ipconfig which is the router.

Jez · 14 Mar 2020 at 11:28

englishpremier said:
I recently re-setup Pi-hole on an unused Pi. Seems things have moved on over the past 6-12 months.

I'm bringing to wonder what the point is in DNS blockers. If it's to avoid ads, google and other organisations are serving ads from the main content domain now, so your google search or youtube videos will still be littered by ads.

I set up pi-hole for the first time yesterday, Ubuntu server, all dns routed through it from all clients. I have very quickly realised that although this is a nice product with a nice interface, it is largely pointless to the point that it has no real benefit in our household.

Desktops and phones (browsing): software ad blockers are better, more granular, can exclude websites temporarily and quickly within the browser plugin, etc, and more importantly performing dpi to block embedded video adverts on YouTube.

smart TVs: (my main want) it has almost no effect as the vendors all serve advert content from the same source as the content.

id love someone to explain how to make the product useful as I do like it

PiKe · 14 Mar 2020 at 14:51

Just let pi-hole do DHCP instead of the vodafone router - thats how I have mine configured.

Bluecube · 14 Mar 2020 at 14:51

My Pihole happily blocks Samsung TV dross. I had to download a specific block list though so have a Google. I have too many devices with various interfaces to be bothering with setting up ad blockers individually even if it’s possible. Pihole is pretty much a fire and forget solution.

Jez · 14 Mar 2020 at 17:08

Bluecube said:
My Pihole happily blocks Samsung TV dross. I had to download a specific block list though so have a Google. I have too many devices with various interfaces to be bothering with setting up ad blockers individually even if it’s possible. Pihole is pretty much a fire and forget solution.

Are you saying that on your Samsung smart tv you see no youtube adverts?