What's new

Entware Pi-hole directly on the router? Yes!

For clarity - the dnsmasq config options have to be added on the router that is acting as DHCP using dnsmasq.add script.
I did, but unfortunately it didn't change anything (But maybe I made mistakes).
 
Last edited:
I did, but unfortunately it didn't change anything (But maybe I made mistakes).
Have you confirmed that those two options were actually in dnsmasq.conf after dnsmasq restart / router reboot?
 
Yes, I restarted dnsmasq (not the router), also the Pi, but it had no effect.
 
Yes, I restarted dnsmasq (not the router), also the Pi, but it had no effect.
How did you check it? It would take a while to be picked up as all devices cache DNS responses anyway, you would have to visit a website you didn't visit before to be 100% sure it didn't.
Does Tools -> Network list your devices?
 
There seem to be more work on the memory optimization being done in the FTL repo - https://github.com/pi-hole/FTL/pull/2757
Considering a lot of people put Entware on fast SSDs this PR might reduce memory requirements to use this project significantly.
If this gets merged it will be available in the development version of the package shortly after.
Just putting a note here that the mentioned pull request has been merged and changes are now available in the development package, for the brave people.
 
Just putting a note here that the mentioned pull request has been merged and changes are now available in the development package, for the brave people.
Well, did you try it yourself yet? :)

Mine is running too smooth to experiment - there is no way to go but down :D
 
Well, did you try it yourself yet? :)

Mine is running too smooth to experiment - there is no way to go but down :D
I'm not running Entware on SSD, yet. 😖
Using a random flash drive that I'm surprised lasted this long (Total written: 82776.33 MB).

Obviously keeping database in memory will be the best way to keep the Pi-hole fast, feature from that PR will only be useful for people close to out of memory situations.
 
I'm not running Entware on SSD, yet. 😖
Using a random flash drive that I'm surprised lasted this long (Total written: 82776.33 MB).

Obviously keeping database in memory will be the best way to keep the Pi-hole fast, feature from that PR will only be useful for people close to out of memory situations.
I have a swap file enabled too. So I guess the OS can swap out instead of having PiHole do it.

I keep my SATA SSD on a cheap USB2 adapter, so max speed is only 30MB/s anyways.
 
Package has been updated!
You can read Pi-hole's blog to see what's new: https://pi-hole.net/blog/2026/02/17/pi-hole-ftl-v6-5-web-v6-4-1-and-core-v6-4-released/

Warning: Teleporter backups created prior to this version won't import as I removed patch that rewrote /opt/etc => /etc in the created zip file.
The reason for this is simple - Teleporter backups are not meant to be cross-device compatible, so patching those paths was a mistake.
 
Updated too! So far so good!

I do see the config option in there "forceDisk = false", so far memory has not been an issue - so won't turn it on.

Memory use looks reasonable so far
Code:
# ps wT |grep pihole
843841 pihole   43468 S <  pihole-FTL
844005 pihole   43468 S <  {database} pihole-FTL
844006 pihole   43468 S <  {housekeeper} pihole-FTL
844007 pihole   43468 S <  {dns-client} pihole-FTL
844008 pihole   43468 S <  {timer} pihole-FTL
844009 pihole   43468 S <  {webserver} pihole-FTL
844010 pihole   43468 S N  {civetweb-timer} pihole-FTL
844011 pihole   43468 S N  {civetweb-master} pihole-FTL
846783 pihole   43468 S N  {civetweb-worker} pihole-FTL
846784 pihole   43468 S N  {civetweb-worker} pihole-FTL
846785 pihole   43468 S N  {civetweb-worker} pihole-FTL
846786 pihole   43468 S N  {civetweb-worker} pihole-FTL
856065 admin     5980 S    grep pihole
 
@jacklul

I ran into a couple of crashes with this new version. DNS stopped working twice now this week, checked PiHole, not running. Has not happened before, at least, I don't recall seeing that.

This error:
Code:
2026-03-04 05:13:40.570 CST [4097M] INFO: ########## FTL terminated after 1h 6m 58s  (code 1)! ##########
2026-03-04 17:08:53.541 CST [5704M] INFO: ########## FTL started on RT-AC86U-9988! ##########
2026-03-06 07:08:00.639 CST [5583M] INFO: ########## FTL terminated after 2h 18m 50s  (code 1)! ##########
2026-03-06 07:22:58.504 CST [452189M] INFO: ########## FTL started on RT-AC86U-9988! ##########
Code:
2026-03-06 07:07:01.737 CST [5583M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 12 seconds
2026-03-06 07:07:13.996 CST [5583/T5612] INFO: Still rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 as it made additional 24698 queries
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: ---------------------------->  FTL crashed!  <----------------------------
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: Please report a bug at https://github.com/pi-hole/FTL/issues
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: and include in your report already the following details:
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL has been running for 8329 seconds
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL branch: master
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL version: v6.5
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL commit: f8883098
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL date: 2026-02-17 20:20:12 +0000
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL user: started as pihole, ended as pihole
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: Compiled for linux/arm64/v8 (compiled on CI) using cc (Alpine 15.2.0) 15.2.0
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: Process details: MID: 5583
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:                  PID: 5583
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:                  TID: 5583
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:                  Name: pihole-FTL
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: Received signal: Segmentation fault
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:      at address: 0
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:      with code:  SEGV_MAPERR (Address not mapped to object)
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: !!! INFO: pihole-FTL has not been compiled with glibc/backtrace support, not generating one !!!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: ------ Listing content of directory /dev/shm ------
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: File Mode User:Group      Size  Filename
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: rwxrwxrwx admin:root      360   .
2026-03-06 07:07:59.756 CST [5583M] INFO: rwxr-xr-x admin:root        3k  ..
2026-03-06 07:07:59.756 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   768k  FTL-5558-recycler
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     8k  FTL-5558-dns-cache-lookup
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    16k  FTL-5558-domains-lookup
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     4k  FTL-5558-clients-lookup
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   555k  FTL-5558-fifo-log
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     4k  FTL-5558-per-client-regex
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    48k  FTL-5558-dns-cache
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     8k  FTL-5558-overTime
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     3M  FTL-5558-queries
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    28k  FTL-5558-upstreams
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   340k  FTL-5558-clients
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    60k  FTL-5558-domains
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   120k  FTL-5558-strings
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   144   FTL-5558-settings
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   344   FTL-5558-counters
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   120   FTL-5558-lock
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: ---------------------------------------------------
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Please also include some lines from above the !!!!!!!!! header.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Thank you for helping us to improve our FTL engine!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Waiting for threads to join
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread database (0) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread housekeeper (1) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread dns-client (2) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread timer (3) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread webserver (7) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: All threads joined
2026-03-06 07:07:59.760 CST [5583M] INFO: PID file emptied
2026-03-06 07:07:59.762 CST [5583M] INFO: Stored 0 API sessions in the database
2026-03-06 07:08:00.639 CST [5583M] INFO: ########## FTL terminated after 2h 18m 50s  (code 1)! ##########
2026-03-06 07:22:58.504 CST [452189M] INFO: ########## FTL started on RT-AC86U-9988! ##########
 
@bibikalka, may or may not be related to causing Pi-Hole to crash but the log you posted indicated device 192.168.1.190 was being rate limited and it still generated an additional 24698 queries while rate limited. May want to check the 192.168.1.190 device to see why it's making so many requests that Pi-Hole rate limited it.
 
@bibikalka, may or may not be related to causing Pi-Hole to crash but the log you posted indicated device 192.168.1.190 was being rate limited and it still generated an additional 24698 queries while rate limited. May want to check the 192.168.1.190 device to see why it's making so many requests that Pi-Hole rate limited it.
Yep, it's a bunch of weird sites. Seems like some malware installed itself on one of my Firesticks that was sitting idle for about 10 days now. A suspicious app called "System update". The requests started on March 2nd, I wonder how that thing got itself installed :
Code:
# grep Rate-limiting FTL.log
2026-03-02 01:43:39.190 CST [3705M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 17 seconds
2026-03-02 04:50:47.472 CST [3700M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 52 seconds
2026-03-03 04:30:31.731 CST [4230M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 14 seconds
2026-03-04 05:08:31.588 CST [4097M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 12 seconds
2026-03-04 17:17:03.481 CST [5721M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 51 seconds
2026-03-06 07:07:01.737 CST [5583M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 12 seconds

It won't be used for a while so I shut it down.

Another stick is also creating bunches of requests, but not as bad, and more regular Amazon junk looking:
Code:
IP address (hostname)    Hardware address    Interface    First seen    Last Query    Number of queries    Uses Pi-hole    Action
IP address (hostname)    Hardware address    Interface    First seen    Last Query    Number of queries    Uses Pi-hole    Action
192.168.1.92 (amazon-ccccccccc)    10:09:
Amazon Technologies Inc.    br0    2025-08-21 21:13:38    2026-03-06 14:47:00    1,475,057   
192.168.1.190 (amazon-ddddddddd)    34:af:
Amazon Technologies Inc.    br0    2025-08-29 15:35:17    2026-03-06 14:39:49    1,415,024
pihole_sites.png



P.S. And that's the power of PiHole, without it there would be no easy way to do comprehensive diagnostics!
 
Last edited:
@jacklul

I ran into a couple of crashes with this new version. DNS stopped working twice now this week, checked PiHole, not running. Has not happened before, at least, I don't recall seeing that.

This error:
Code:
2026-03-04 05:13:40.570 CST [4097M] INFO: ########## FTL terminated after 1h 6m 58s  (code 1)! ##########
2026-03-04 17:08:53.541 CST [5704M] INFO: ########## FTL started on RT-AC86U-9988! ##########
2026-03-06 07:08:00.639 CST [5583M] INFO: ########## FTL terminated after 2h 18m 50s  (code 1)! ##########
2026-03-06 07:22:58.504 CST [452189M] INFO: ########## FTL started on RT-AC86U-9988! ##########
Code:
2026-03-06 07:07:01.737 CST [5583M] INFO: Rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 for at least 12 seconds
2026-03-06 07:07:13.996 CST [5583/T5612] INFO: Still rate-limiting 192.168.1.190 as it made additional 24698 queries
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: ---------------------------->  FTL crashed!  <----------------------------
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: Please report a bug at https://github.com/pi-hole/FTL/issues
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: and include in your report already the following details:
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL has been running for 8329 seconds
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL branch: master
2026-03-06 07:07:59.753 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL version: v6.5
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL commit: f8883098
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL date: 2026-02-17 20:20:12 +0000
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: FTL user: started as pihole, ended as pihole
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: Compiled for linux/arm64/v8 (compiled on CI) using cc (Alpine 15.2.0) 15.2.0
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: Process details: MID: 5583
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:                  PID: 5583
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:                  TID: 5583
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:                  Name: pihole-FTL
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: Received signal: Segmentation fault
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:      at address: 0
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO:      with code:  SEGV_MAPERR (Address not mapped to object)
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: !!! INFO: pihole-FTL has not been compiled with glibc/backtrace support, not generating one !!!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: ------ Listing content of directory /dev/shm ------
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: File Mode User:Group      Size  Filename
2026-03-06 07:07:59.754 CST [5583M] INFO: rwxrwxrwx admin:root      360   .
2026-03-06 07:07:59.756 CST [5583M] INFO: rwxr-xr-x admin:root        3k  ..
2026-03-06 07:07:59.756 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   768k  FTL-5558-recycler
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     8k  FTL-5558-dns-cache-lookup
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    16k  FTL-5558-domains-lookup
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     4k  FTL-5558-clients-lookup
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   555k  FTL-5558-fifo-log
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     4k  FTL-5558-per-client-regex
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    48k  FTL-5558-dns-cache
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     8k  FTL-5558-overTime
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole     3M  FTL-5558-queries
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    28k  FTL-5558-upstreams
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   340k  FTL-5558-clients
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole    60k  FTL-5558-domains
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   120k  FTL-5558-strings
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   144   FTL-5558-settings
2026-03-06 07:07:59.757 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   344   FTL-5558-counters
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: rw------- pihole:pihole   120   FTL-5558-lock
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: ---------------------------------------------------
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Please also include some lines from above the !!!!!!!!! header.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Thank you for helping us to improve our FTL engine!
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Waiting for threads to join
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread database (0) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.758 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread housekeeper (1) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread dns-client (2) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread timer (3) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: Thread webserver (7) is idle, terminating it.
2026-03-06 07:07:59.759 CST [5583M] INFO: All threads joined
2026-03-06 07:07:59.760 CST [5583M] INFO: PID file emptied
2026-03-06 07:07:59.762 CST [5583M] INFO: Stored 0 API sessions in the database
2026-03-06 07:08:00.639 CST [5583M] INFO: ########## FTL terminated after 2h 18m 50s  (code 1)! ##########
2026-03-06 07:22:58.504 CST [452189M] INFO: ########## FTL started on RT-AC86U-9988! ##########

I've seen people reporting some crashes after v6.5 release, this might be connected.
Figuring this out is a bit outside of my expertise but I would appreciate a full crash logs for both of them.
Would probably need to be debugged with valgrind and gdb which might not be easy to run with Entware.

If you're up to the challenge per instructions from https://docs.pi-hole.net/ftldns/gdb/:
Code:
opkg install screen gdb
screen
gdb -p $(cat /opt/var/run/pihole-FTL.pid)
# Type the following commands:
handle SIGHUP nostop SIGPIPE nostop SIGTERM nostop SIG32 nostop SIG33 nostop SIG34 nostop SIG35 nostop SIG36 nostop SIG37 nostop SIG38 nostop SIG39 nostop SIG40 nostop SIG41 nostop
continue
# press CTRL+A, then D to detach
# You can disconnect from the SSH after that
When FTL crashes - restore the screen session via screen -r, copy everything you can see (the bigger the window the more output should be visible there) then type "backtrace" and copy that output as well.
 
Last edited:
Found a trojan on 192.168.1.190 that apparently was resolving some sites and creating a flood of DNS requests.

Still, PiHole should not crash in those circumstances ! :D

 
@jacklul
I posted a bug report here: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/issues/6557#issuecomment-4014302072

It seems those malware sites are designed to try to crash the resolver.

I don't think it's an issue of EntWare version ...

Remember that logs uploaded to lurking-cat.appspot.com are only accessible by me.
To upload to the official server (so that Pi-hole developers can view them) use cat /opt/var/log/pihole/pihole_debug.log | pihole tricorder original
As instructed after answering YES to "Would you like to upload the log?":

1772882847689.png
 
Found a trojan on 192.168.1.190 that apparently was resolving some sites and creating a flood of DNS requests.
Obvious question is how did malware/trojan get onto the Amazon Firestick? Was it through an installed app (if so which one) or through some other method? If you have one infected device on the local network, are there others?
Still, PiHole should not crash in those circumstances !
As with any addon script, there is no guarantee it won't crash or have adverse affects. You are running Pi-Hole that wasn't, as I understand it, installed using an official Pi-Hole installation package on a device (router) running third party firmware (Asus-Merlin) that wasn't officially (by Asus) designed to run Pi-Hole or other addon scripts. While Pi-Hole may operate in such a setup you may experience unexpected behaviors. In this case an infected device may have triggered, lead too, or contributed to, a Pi-Hole crash.
 

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