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.

  • NaibofTabrEnglish
    36•9 months ago

    A 30 day DHCP lease expiration would explain OP’s issue.

    • fuzzy_feelingEnglish
      18•9 months ago

      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.

      • NaibofTabrEnglish
        8•9 months ago

        Maybe, but I suspect it’s working like this:

        • Pi boots then requests locally configured IP from DHCP server
        • DHCP server grants 30 day lease for requested IP
        • Pihole runs fine for awhile, DNS requests are properly handled
        • IP lease expires, DHCP server returns IP to available address pool but doesn’t reassign it to anything yet
        • time passes
        • Random wireless device connects to router, DHCP server assigns IP to new device
        • DNS requests to Pihole fail because the IP was assigned to the recently connected wireless device

        This would explain why Pihole appears to cause problems every month, sometimes a little longer.