The original post: /r/pihole by /u/mvmiller12 on 2025-02-22 13:53:45.

After upgrading to v6 this morning, all of my DNS stopped working, and like many here I was getting the Error 403: FORBIDDEN when trying to access the Pihole admin page in any browser. After some web searching and self-troubleshooting I was able to get mine back online, so I figured I’d share what worked for me here to help the next g(uy/al) not have to feel my pain.

  1. Error 403: FORBIDDEN on web admin page – PiHole v6 now has it’s own built-in web server and no longer requires the LIGHTTPD service to provide that function. Under Pihole v5 (using LIGHTTPD, of course) I had had the interface set with no password since it is only accessible internally on my network anyway. To fix this after the v6 upgrade, I had to manually go to https://pi.hole/admin where I got the security warning message (and continued anyway) and then a password prompt to log in. This would not let me log in without a password being set for the Pihole, so I SSH’d into the Pihole server and used SUDO PIHOLE SETPASSWORD to set one. After this I was able to enter the password and log into the web interface normally. Subsequent log ins have not prompted me again for the password thus far.

  2. My DNS resolution was just not working and I could not get out to the web without temporarily using Google’s 8.8.8.8 public DNS server. Once I got back into the Pihole web admin interface, I had a warning indicating there was no upstream DNS server. Well, that’ll certainly do it! I had UNBOUND configured on my server for use as a Recursive DNS and for some reason, the upgrade blew away my “Custom DNS” server config for UNBOUND. Putting 127.0.0.1#5335 back into Pihole’s Settings/DNS/Custom DNS Servers fixed this problem and I put myself back behind my Pihole with no further issues.

Since I have no other web pages being run from this server, I went ahead and uninstalled the LIGHTTPD service using SUDO APT REMOVE LIGHTTPD - this was not required to fix Pihole, but there is no point in running and maintaining a service that is no longer being utilized.

Also, the Star Trek: Picard Dark LCARS interface theme is missing :(. Hopefully this comes back in a future update.