But to my mind the added cost and complexity of a second Pi-hole just isn't worth the effort given their reliability.
For sure.
At work, before we upgraded our store RDP servers to WinServer 2019, I was running 5 Raspberry Pi's at one of our stores, they had been in operation from 2018 to 2021, 100% uptime, never been shut down, running entirely on a cheap SD card with the 'WTWare' thinclient OS.
They were all RPi 3B+ with 2GB RAM, and no overclocking of the CPU.
I do wish there was better thinclient software for the Pi though, WTWare and so many like it don't support the 'remote control' feature of Windows Server, or the load-balancing support of the remote desktop gateway (Where you connect to the primary server with your login details, and it shunts you off to a less populated server).
Yes it does make this easier. But to my mind the added cost and complexity of a second Pi-hole just isn't worth the effort given their reliability.
I was running Pinole on a 3B+ as my primary, and also running Pihole on my NAS for redundancy. I wasn't using either for DHCP though – this is what I need to change, then disable DHCP on the router.
This makes PiHole a single point of failure, doesn't it? If the Pi is down, you have no LAN?
So you just set the router back to the default settings until you sort out the PiHole.... Simples.... I think you are overthinking this.
You can always make an image of a second SD card and plug that in and be up and running again in quick time or even have a second cold spare PiHole and just swap that out.....
(Edit:- For those using DietPi as the OS (on the PiHole Pi or elsewhere), Version 8 DietPi is now out of beta and released)
Checked my PiHole and noticed I've got 333 errors coming up for 'Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150)'
This has just happened since 6AM this morning, seems to log a new one of these events every 10-30 seconds since then.
Edit: SmartTV seems to have randomly increase to 16,000+ requests in this period?
'Maximum number of concurrent DNS queries reached (max: 150)'
Got that today as well, but only 4 notifications at 5.30pm which coincides with 18 year old getting home.
Any ideas, before I either plug it into a wired network (which may not help)
1. Disable IPv6 unless you are using it.
2. Sounds like the DHCP server is not responding.
3. Check https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/dhcpcd for options.
4. sudo apt update
5. sudo apt upgrade
6. sudo apt upgrade pi hardware
Any ideas, before I either plug it into a wired
Sounds like packets aren't reaching the right places. Any firewall? Also since you're wireless, is there any setting in the AP that blocks or filters broadcast packets? Do you have any VLANs setup?
Got that today as well, but only 4 notifications at 5.30pm which coincides with 18 year old getting home
Come back to another 130+ tonight from 1PM to about 7PM
Seems to do it every few seconds, is this something I should be concerned about or just ignore it?
Sounds like packets aren't reaching the right places. Any firewall? Also since you're wireless, is there any setting in the AP that blocks or filters broadcast packets? Do you have any VLANs setup?
The Pi gets a DHCP lease on reboot ok. Then renewing it fails.
After the DHCP lease fails to renew the device keeps communicating fine until eventually the lease expires and it releases the IP addresses. The DHCP server shows it's receiving and acknowledging the requests, but somehow they're not getting through. There's no firewall on the device.
Weirdly this all started when I upgraded the firmware on my UniFi access points. The DHCP server is nothing to do with UniFi though. And there are no other devices on that WiFi (or any SSID) that is having any DHCP problems.
There's a new UniFi firmware update available now though and the release notes look a bit suspicious...
Come back to another 130+ tonight from 1PM to about 7PM
My Samsung TV (and devices) phone home a lot for me. This is what I block for Samsung:-
cdn.samsungcloudsolution.com 10,684
time.samsungcloudsolution.com 600
Seems to do it every few seconds, is this something I should be concerned about or just ignore it?
I guess the PiHole is working well?
I have run into a problem with my Pi 3 running (latest version) OSMC. It plays everything with the exception of HEVC.x265.mkv files. I get sound but no video. This happens both on a local drive and over the network. Doing some Googling it appears that .mkv containers are not supported on OSMC.
Can anyone comment on this? Is this info correct? Is there a workaround? Fortunately the media server on my Samsung TV works with these .mkv files so I can play them that way but OSMC is more convenient to me.
. I get sound but no video.
A Pi 3 limitation perhaps? https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/m
"The Pi 3, can only play very badly to 720p max in HEVC… that is what I hear from."
Yes, I saw that reference. People with Pi 2's are complaining also, Pi 4 is relatively new on the scene. My audio is fine but I have no video at all. Many of these references go back to around 2015 – 2017 so I was hoping that a fix had occurred in the meantime but it appears not. It seems a limitation of OSMC on Raspberry Pi?
It seems a limitation of OSMC on Raspberry Pi?
Possible. Maybe put an android onto a spare sd card and see what VLC does with the files?
Question, could I use the PI as a NAS with a USB3 external HDD? I've got a single bay QNAP TS120 I'm currently using but I'd like to give external access to a friend remotely via the internet, I'm thinking about adding one or two 12GB externally.
Im not too fussed about data redundancy, single drive NAS has been operating with a normal 4TB drive for 5+ years, it just stores media.
Could it run Pihole + NAS functionalities simultaneously (and securely?)
Could it run Pihole + NAS functionalities simultaneously (and securely?)
You should be able to do all those things easily using DietPi. You have a choice of FTP and other file servers for your NAS.
https://dietpi.com/docs/software/
Question, could I use the PI as a NAS with a USB3 external HDD
You can indeed.
My Pi4 has an SD card for the basic OS stuff, and a 500GB Samsung T5 SSD that I got from OW for $80 for the mass storage.
Just don't be expecting the best read/write speeds around.
My Pi4 has an SD card for the basic OS stuff, and a 500GB Samsung T5 SSD that I got from OW for $80 for the mass storage.
What USB to SATA connector thing did you buy (precise details would be good since issues with such things are a known problem).
What USB to SATA connector thing did you buy (precise details would be good since issues with such things are a known problem).
As a start have a look at this video:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpvlEbdA6qI
do a YouTube search as well – there are many videos using Raspi NAS.