If you can't access your server and your router's web interface, that's a subnetting/DHCP allocation issue. Nothing to do with Pi-Hole.
For reference, there's 2 ways to allocate static addresses to devices:
"Skill issue bro" /s
A 30 day DHCP lease expiration would explain OP's issue.
I vote for 60 day lease time, iirc the clients try to get a new lease when half of the time is over, so they can keep the ip.
Maybe, but I suspect it's working like this:
This would explain why Pihole appears to cause problems every month, sometimes a little longer.
Basically, no static IPs at all. Lol
Definitely a skill issue haha. I’m brand new to this stuff so I’m trying to learn as fast as possible. Appreciate the help and the explanations!
It's alright, most computer geeks (even professional ones) can't even figure out how IP addressing works. That's why networking is its own sub group in enterprise environments.
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.
Are we getting a repeat of the guy who's wifi didn't work because of a smart bulb?
Wait, smart bulbs run rogue dhcp servers now?
I assume the issue was the bulb was getting assigned by DHCP the same address that was supposed to be reserved for their PC, thus their wifi appearing not to work for their PC.
Haha not quite. Sounds like an interesting post though. I’ll have to look that one up. From all the help given to me here though it looks like my “static” ip is within dhcp range so my router is giving everyone else my key to the castle and therefore invalidating my key.
Yea, duplicate IP addresses lead to some funny business. Toss a coin to see if a network packet will arrive basically.
The solution is to adjust the DHCP range or use static DHCP on the router. The latter just means that the router will assign the same IP to the specified computer every time.
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.
I’m not able to log into my router in order to edit any of my dhcp settings 😭 little caveat there.
Then that’s likely your issue.
Your router occasionally gives out the ip of your pihole to someone else, and everything shuts the bed.
Try picking x.x.x.254 as the pihole address or x.x.x.2
Often routers won’t use either the top end or low end of the available addresses.
The machines on your network that are dhcp, do they go below 100? Do they go above 200?
You’re going to be guessing a little here.
What is your “net mask”
Ya I’m pretty sure you’re correct here and this is my issue. Since I’m not able to log into my router and define my dhcp range, I’ve picked an IP near the end of the range (254).
All my other devices are assigned .23, .25, etc.
Fun learning experience haha
Your ip-mask will tell you what IPs are accessible on the network
Likely goes nowhere because it’s probably 255.255.255.0 but it’s possible to be something else.
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!
That definitely sounds like you've found the issue, hopefully changing the IP solves it!
Do you run your PiHole on top of Docker? There's an issue with docker and Raspberry Pis which makes the network crap out periodically. So if your PuHole becomes unavailable until you restart your Pi it might be this:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/4092/
Solution is to add "denyinterfaces veth*" to the dhcpd.conf
Oh my gosh. I have been trying to figure this issue out with my docker containers for months. If this is the fix, THANK YOU.
I have had this issue for about a year, while trying different monitoring and logging solutions to try and find out what's going on.
This was such a bitch! Now I'm spreading the word, so that other won't suffer as long as I have.
My first thought on this was immediately "did you also reserve that static IP address on your router to make sure it remains assigned". From what I've read that does seem to be the issue, so that's a little validating.
I managed to get into my router and my Pihole server shows up as static and I’ve assigned it an address at the higher end of the DHCP range so we’ll see when the lease expire 🤷
Don't set the static IP within the DHCP range (well you can, but it then depends on how smart your dhcp server is, just avoid the situation).
You run a risk of the same IP being assigned to another device.
As long as the router has the IP explicitly reserved for the device your PiHole is running off of then it won't be reassigned.
Are you assigning the static address on your pi, or are you assigning a static address on the router?
I would HIGHLY recommend that for something as essential as DNS, you should be running it on its own hardware. Considering, as you’ve experienced, that any issues result in a complete loss of normal access to the internet.
You can run pihole on something as small as a Raspberry Pi zero w, then just set it with a static IP and forget about it.
Considering you said you’re currently using WSL I suspect there is an extra layer of networking bullshit that is breaking your routing. If you haven’t already looked at this document, it might have the information you need https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/networking#accessing-windows-networking-apps-from-linux-host-ip
But for the sake of stable DNS services you will thank yourself for just getting a dedicated device of any power level to ONLY handle DNS.
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.
Your static IP probably isn't set on the router
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]
I had similar issues when SLAAC wasn't properly configured for my network. Every however many days my ISP forced a modem reboot and if the delegated prefix happened to change I'd start having pihole problems. I finally tracked that down, made sure SLAAC was working everywhere and assigned my pihole container a SLAAC token so its address relative to everything else on the network didn't change and I'm good to go. These days the pihole is always ...253 and ::253.
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