5 ms·

Have to say I've never had a single issue with pihole unlike the OP. It's literally been "install and forget" - not a single outage in maybe 3 years of use. Whe

Have to say I've never had a single issue with pihole unlike the OP. It's literally been "install and forget" - not a single outage in maybe 3 years of use. When I use the Internet elsewhere I see what a good job it does when I'm at home...

MattSayar 2y ago
Do you think that's because of the hardware you're running it on? Do you actually use a Raspberry Pi or something more resilient?
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  I just run it in a Docker container on my NUC that i upgrade occasionally, no issues for years.
- djaychela 2y ago
  It's running on my home server which is a low powered celeron J3120 (I think) on Ubuntu LTS , so possibly that may make a difference, although I've used pis in long term always on other applications and they've been fine but perhaps pihole may be too much for a pi.
- toywinder 2y ago
  I have been running pi-hole on a raspberry for years with no downtime, op is either pitching for the DNS provider or they have not deployed their pi-hole correctly.
  - MattSayar 2y ago
    My only financial relationship with NextDNS is the $40 I've spent on the service so far. Another comment mentioned turning off query logging since that amount of activity is hard on an SD card, so you may be onto something with deploying it incorrectly
- vitaflo 2y ago
  For myself I’ve been running pihole on an RPi3 for 7 years and have never had one single issue with it at all. Maybe I’m just lucky I dunno. I’m always surprised when I hear people have issues with it.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Been running my PiHole on a ZeroPi[1] for many years without issues. Initially it was unstable, but turned out I had been scammed and the USB "charging cable" I had bought at the local electronics store had 1 Ohm resistance. Replaced it with a proper USB cable and it's been rock solid since. So solid I keep forgetting about it in fact. [1]: https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=266 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...
mfro 2y ago
I have also had 0 issues with pihole, but switched to technitium for the extra features. Only issues I have had were related to the SD card. Turned off query logging and 0 issues since. SD cards are an awful place to run an OS from.
- ycombinatrix 2y ago
  Log to tmpfs or ramdisk
stego-tech 2y ago
Same. The only outages I had were self-caused due to my (at the time) inexperience with Linux and the hardware of the RPi it was running on - namely the lack of RTC support and my unfamiliarity with fallback methods for Linux that didn't rely on HTTPS for NTP. My own fault, really, but an amazing learning experience. Since then, it's trucked along without issue for years. Couldn't use the internet without it at this point.
sambaumann 2y ago
I have my cell phone routed to my pi hole for DNS even when I'm not at home using tailscale. It's a great experience
jaymzcampbell 2y ago
I had very similar sounding issues to the OP and thought it's probably something to do with a suboptimal SD card and/or overheating or memory. I also ended up using NextDNS and tbf really like it. Does a great job at a decent price and the admin is useful. I keep thinking I should just setup another pihole but NextDNS are at a very, very sweet price point that by the time I renew (tbf I think I fit within the free tier but wanted to support it), I just throw them another 20eur.
zenethian 2y ago
Mine craps out every 2-3 months for no apparent reason. It doesn't crash, there's no errors in the logs, it just stops responding. I restart the service and it's fine. No idea why. I setup a cron to restart it weekly just to keep it from being a problem.
chaos0815 2y ago
I had similar issues with PiHole on a RasPi. I had to restart every month or so, until I noticed power alerts. Turns out the power brick was underpowered. Is running like a charm after changing to an apporopriate power supply.
stanski 2y ago
My last problem with pihole was that I had forgotten the root user password on the system I installed it on. Exactly because I had set it up and then literally forgotten it...
bigiain 2y ago
I have the same experience. But I'm running it on a NUC not a RasPi, which probably helps a lot. Having said that, I have a Pi running HomeBridge to make a Pi camera and some non Apple Homekit capable IoT shit work with my phones/iPad, and I'm pretty sure the last few times it's rebooted were due to power outages, and I can't remember the last time I needed to even hit the HomeBridge web interface, never mind ssh into it. I'm a little surprised unscheduled power outages haven't borked the sd card, it's not even configured to do the ramfs overlay thing.

MattSayar 2y ago

Do you think that's because of the hardware you're running it on? Do you actually use a Raspberry Pi or something more resilient?

Hikikomori 2y ago
I just run it in a Docker container on my NUC that i upgrade occasionally, no issues for years.
djaychela 2y ago
It's running on my home server which is a low powered celeron J3120 (I think) on Ubuntu LTS , so possibly that may make a difference, although I've used pis in long term always on other applications and they've been fine but perhaps pihole may be too much for a pi.
toywinder 2y ago
I have been running pi-hole on a raspberry for years with no downtime, op is either pitching for the DNS provider or they have not deployed their pi-hole correctly.
- MattSayar 2y ago
  My only financial relationship with NextDNS is the $40 I've spent on the service so far. Another comment mentioned turning off query logging since that amount of activity is hard on an SD card, so you may be onto something with deploying it incorrectly
vitaflo 2y ago
For myself I’ve been running pihole on an RPi3 for 7 years and have never had one single issue with it at all. Maybe I’m just lucky I dunno. I’m always surprised when I hear people have issues with it.
magicalhippo 2y ago
Been running my PiHole on a ZeroPi[1] for many years without issues. Initially it was unstable, but turned out I had been scammed and the USB "charging cable" I had bought at the local electronics store had 1 Ohm resistance. Replaced it with a proper USB cable and it's been rock solid since. So solid I keep forgetting about it in fact. [1]: https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=266 https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product...

mfro 2y ago

I have also had 0 issues with pihole, but switched to technitium for the extra features. Only issues I have had were related to the SD card. Turned off query logging and 0 issues since. SD cards are an awful place to run an OS from.

ycombinatrix 2y ago
Log to tmpfs or ramdisk

stego-tech 2y ago

Same. The only outages I had were self-caused due to my (at the time) inexperience with Linux and the hardware of the RPi it was running on - namely the lack of RTC support and my unfamiliarity with fallback methods for Linux that didn't rely on HTTPS for NTP. My own fault, really, but an amazing learning experience. Since then, it's trucked along without issue for years. Couldn't use the internet without it at this point.

sambaumann 2y ago

I have my cell phone routed to my pi hole for DNS even when I'm not at home using tailscale. It's a great experience

jaymzcampbell 2y ago

I had very similar sounding issues to the OP and thought it's probably something to do with a suboptimal SD card and/or overheating or memory. I also ended up using NextDNS and tbf really like it. Does a great job at a decent price and the admin is useful. I keep thinking I should just setup another pihole but NextDNS are at a very, very sweet price point that by the time I renew (tbf I think I fit within the free tier but wanted to support it), I just throw them another 20eur.

zenethian 2y ago

Mine craps out every 2-3 months for no apparent reason. It doesn't crash, there's no errors in the logs, it just stops responding. I restart the service and it's fine. No idea why. I setup a cron to restart it weekly just to keep it from being a problem.

chaos0815 2y ago

I had similar issues with PiHole on a RasPi. I had to restart every month or so, until I noticed power alerts. Turns out the power brick was underpowered. Is running like a charm after changing to an apporopriate power supply.

stanski 2y ago

My last problem with pihole was that I had forgotten the root user password on the system I installed it on. Exactly because I had set it up and then literally forgotten it...

bigiain 2y ago

I have the same experience. But I'm running it on a NUC not a RasPi, which probably helps a lot. Having said that, I have a Pi running HomeBridge to make a Pi camera and some non Apple Homekit capable IoT shit work with my phones/iPad, and I'm pretty sure the last few times it's rebooted were due to power outages, and I can't remember the last time I needed to even hit the HomeBridge web interface, never mind ssh into it. I'm a little surprised unscheduled power outages haven't borked the sd card, it's not even configured to do the ramfs overlay thing.