Additional Instructions for Pi-hole v5 Users

The Pi-hole dev team announced the public beta of Pi-hole v5 on Jan 19, 2020. If you'd like more information (including instructions on how to upgrade to the new beta version AT YOUR OWN RISK), check out the Pi-hole beta announcement.

The biggest change in Pi-hole v5 is that blocklist, blacklist, whitelist, and regex info is no longer stored in individual text files -- they are now all stored in a single database file called gravity.db. As a result, the latest version of pihole-cloudsync needs to know which version of Pi-hole you're running to properly sync. pihole-cloudsync cannot synchronize multiple Pi-holes of different major versions. You can sync a v4 Pi-hole with unlimited v4 Pi-holes, or a v5 Pi-hole with unlimited v5 Pi-holes. But you cannot sync a v4 Pi-hole to a v5 Pi-hole.

Before proceeding, verify that your Primary and all Secondary Pi-holes are running Pi-hole v5.

Configuring pihole-cloudsync to work with Pi-hole v5

Because Pi-hole v5 is still in beta, the default options for pihole-cloudsync are still configured for Pi-hole v4. Once v5 becomes the official release and sees wider adoption, I'll update pihole-cloudsync to work with Pi-hole v5 by default. For now, you'll have to make a few changes to the script to work with Pi-hole v5's new database.

If you already have a previous version of `pihole-cloudsync` installed

To upgrade to the latest version of pihole-cloudsync, do the following on all Primary and Secondary Pi-holes. Note that this will completely over-write any previous modifications you've made to pihole-cloudsync.

Do cd /usr/local/bin/pihole-cloudsync
Do git fetch --all
Do git reset --hard origin/master

Your local version of pihole-cloudsync is now updated to the lastest release version.

If you are installing `pihole-cloudsync` for the first time

Follow the instructions in the standard README to clone a fresh install of pihole-cloudsync -- but do not run it until you've made the following changes:

Do cd /usr/local/bin/pihole-cloudsync
Edit pihole-cloudsync with a text editor
In the CONSTANTS section, change pihole_version=4 to pihole_version=5

Shared Hosts Mode with Pi-hole v5

The Shared Hosts Mode option is still available in pihole-cloudsync for users who wish to remain on Pi-hole v4.

One of the new features of Pi-hole v5 is a Custom DNS tool that replicates pihole-cloudsync's Shared Hosts Mode. Custom DNS entries can now be stored in Pi-hole's gravity.db file, which is then sychronized between your Primary and Secondary Pi-holes... along with the Custom DNS hosts.

I recommend Pi-hole v5 users set the enable_hosts variable in the pihole-cloudsync script to off and manually migrate their shared hosts into Pi-hole v5 using the Custom DNS page in the admin UI.

Known Issues

The only issue I know of currently is that because Pi-hole now stores all its information in a single database file, that single file can easily be larger than the 50MB that Github recommends. I currently have it working just fine with a DB file that's currently over 70MB. Github allows it but throws a filesize warning when doing a "push." I may eventually get around to using GitHub's large file management system, but for now this works.

Disclaimer

As always, you are totally responsible for anything this script does to your system. Whether it launches a nice game of Tic Tac Toe or global thermonuclear war, you're on your own. :)

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