Pi-hole collector

Pi-hole is a Linux network-level advertisement and Internet tracker blocking application which acts as a DNS sinkhole, intended for use on a private network.

This module will monitor one or more Pi-hole instances using PHP API.

The API exposed data time frame is for the last 24 hr. All collected values are for that time frame, not for the module collection interval.

Metrics

All metrics have "pihole." prefix.

Metric	Scope	Dimensions	Units
dns_queries_total	global	queries	queries
dns_queries	global	cached, blocked, forwarded	queries
dns_queries_percentage	global	cached, blocked, forwarded	percentage
unique_clients	global	unique	clients
domains_on_blocklist	global	blocklist	domains
blocklist_last_update	global	ago	seconds
unwanted_domains_blocking_status	global	enabled, disabled	status
dns_queries_types	global	a, aaaa, any, ptr, soa, srv, txt	percentage
dns_queries_forwarded_destination	global	cached, blocked, other	percentage

Configuration

Edit the go.d/pihole.conf configuration file using edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically at /etc/netdata.

cd /etc/netdata # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory
sudo ./edit-config go.d/pihole.conf

Module automatically detects Pihole web password reading setupVars.conf file. It expects to find the file in the /etc/pihole/ directory.

If you want to monitor remote instance you need to set the password in the module configuration file.

Here is an example for local and remote instances:

jobs:
  - name: local
    top_clients_entries: 10
    top_items_entries: 10  # top permitted and top blocked domains charts

  - name: remote
    url: http://203.0.113.10
    password: 1ebd33f882f9aa5fac26a7cb74704742f91100228eb322e41b7bd6e6aeb8f74b

  - name: remote_https
    url: https://203.0.113.11
    password: 1ebd33f882f9aa5fac26a7cb74704742f91100228eb322e41b7bd6e6aeb8f74b
    tls_skip_verify: yes  # self signed certificate verification skip

For all available options please see module configuration file.

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot issues with the pihole collector, run the go.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn't working.

First, navigate to your plugins' directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that's not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the setting plugins directory. Once you're in the plugin's directory, switch to the netdata user.

cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
sudo -u netdata -s

You can now run the go.d.plugin to debug the collector:

./go.d.plugin -d -m pihole