Very odd Problem - after sync, pihole and all its ports are blocked

[grillop]

I almost didn't post this, because I'm pretty sure I have a rats nest of a configuration. But, I'm about to simply try something else because syncing is not only not working - something is corrupting access to pihole in every way, requiring pihole restart. I love the simplicity of this produce - and I, in no way, am disparaging. I just can't get it to work.

so, feel free to ignore or delete this, because I also have a feeling this is above my paygrade maybe and I've simply missed something obvious and maybe a squirrely configuration because of it.

Configuration(s)

• 2 raspberry pi 3b running bookworm headless
  Docker Tag 2025.04.0Core v6.0.6FTL v6.1Web interface v6.1

• portainer installed on both to manage docker

• I have both servers running pihole and unbound and they seem to be responding well

Specific maybe odd configuration

• Pihole runs in container
• Unbound does not (had issues with that)
  So, this required, it would seem, some special configuration. Maybe it relates

Pihole in a container upstream dns to 127.0.0.1#5335.
Well, the container and that address not good.

In order for the container to hit that host address I added extra_hosts: "host.docker.internal:host-gateway"

Pihole then uses host.docker.internal#5335 as upstream server

I also needed to add UFW entries to allow docker and docker network address access to port 5335

All is working. Great, let's sync. So, now I add NebularSync:

code
services:
nebula-sync:
image: ghcr.io/lovelaze/nebula-sync:latest
container_name: nebula-sync
environment:
- PRIMARY=http://192.168.1.22|password
- REPLICAS=http://192.168.1.226|password
- FULL_SYNC=false
- RUN_GRAVITY=true
- CRON=* * * * *
code

I bring up sync, and it syncs once, then apparently pihole restarts or reloads something and then access to pihole is gone. as you can see below logs works once, then fails to connect. Well, nothing connects after that.

code
2025-05-25T19:07:31Z INF Syncing teleporters...
2025-05-25T19:07:31Z INF Syncing configs...
2025-05-25T19:07:31Z INF Running gravity...
2025-05-25T19:07:31Z INF Invalidating sessions...
2025-05-25T19:07:31Z INF Sync completed
2025-05-25T19:08:00Z INF Running sync mode=selective replicas=1
2025-05-25T19:08:00Z INF Authenticating clients...
2025-05-25T19:08:02Z INF Invalidating sessions...
2025-05-25T19:08:04Z WRN Failed to invalidate session for target:

http://192.168.1.226
2025-05-25T19:08:04Z ERR Sync failed error="authenticate: http://192.168.1.226/api/auth: Post "http://192.168.1.226/api/auth\": dial tcp 192.168.1.226:80: connect: connection refused"

`code'

And the corresponding logs on pihole
code
2025-05-25 14:55:38.158 EDT [48/T77] INFO: Round-trip delay: 8.419745e+01 ms (excluded 1 outliers)
2025-05-25 14:55:38.158 EDT [48/T600] INFO: NTP server listening on 0.0.0.0:123 (IPv4)
2025-05-25 14:55:38.159 EDT [48/T601] INFO: NTP server listening on :::123 (IPv6)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.224 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring file etc/pihole/pihole.toml in Teleporter archive (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.224 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring file etc/pihole/dhcp.leases in Teleporter archive (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.224 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table group in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.224 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table adlist in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.224 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table adlist_by_group in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.225 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table domainlist in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.225 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table domainlist_by_group in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.225 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table client in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.225 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Ignoring table client_by_group in etc/pihole/gravity.db (not in import list)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.230 EDT [48/T857] INFO: Restarting FTL: Teleporter (ZIP) import
2025-05-25 15:07:31.230 EDT [48M] INFO: Asked to terminate by "/usr/bin/pihole-FTL no-daemon" (PID 48, user pihole UID 1000)
2025-05-25 15:07:31.237 EDT [48/T857] INFO: No config changes detected
2025-05-25 15:07:31.251 EDT [48/T78] INFO: Terminating database thread
2025-05-25 15:07:31.277 EDT [48/T81] INFO: Terminating timer thread
2025-05-25 15:07:31.498 EDT [48M] INFO: Finished final database update
2025-05-25 15:07:31.498 EDT [48M] INFO: Waiting for threads to join
2025-05
code

well, if you got this far - thanks for reading. This is probably a cockpit error and something going on inside pihole... but i just figured I'd post this without expecting anybody to read or deal with it.

unless, of course, something like this has come up or if something. odd that it syncs nicely - once.

[grillop]

Well, after entering all that and searching for answers, I found this:
#106

so ... I set RUN_GRAVITY=false
and sure enough, the problem went away - whatever the problem was

But ... if anybody as more info, like bad side effects by turning that off ... please advise.

sorry to bother you all