[SOLVED] Why is Moode pounding my router?

[HemiRick]

Ok I understand about 75% of these responses..... 

What is wrong w the IP address of the Moode?

I have modified the hosts file on the pi hole machine to include the router.

Why is Moode trying to resolve this address?

Confusing but learning
Thanks
Rick

[Tim Curtis]

When you configure a host with a static IP address the host name can't be resolved by the DNS because it does not yet contain a record that maps the host name to the IP address of the host. Normally this record has to be manually added to the /etc/hosts file on the server running the DNS.

The issue you are experiencing is not really a moOOde issue. You should be able to ping your Router by its host name or FQDN and it should return the Routers LAN interface ip address. If it doesn't;t then there is some breakage in your network configuration.

[HemiRick]

my etc/hosts file includes a line ea7300router 192.168.1.1

When I ping ea73000router it works fine.

Should I change the name of ea73000router to something else like EA7300.home.linksys.com?

Thanks
Rick

[Tim Curtis]

Hi Rick,

These types of questions would be better asked on the Pi-Hole forum. I have no experience configuring Linksys Routers or Pi-Hole. What I can say with certainty is that the string "EA7300.home.linksys.com" does not appear anywhere in moOde source code. It would have to come from somewhere external to moOde.

Try posting your configuration and questions on their Forum and see if someone offers some help :-)

-Tim

[TheOldPresbyope]

@HemiRick

Wait!

I just noticed that I made a mistake in my analysis of dnsmasq output. I took your statement that it's your moOde player doing the pounding at face value. 

Looking back at your dnsmasq output, it's the host at 192.168.1.130 which is asking for the address resolution of the fully qualified domain name "EA7300.home.linksys.com" but your earlier post says your moOde player is at 192.168.1.177.

So what is the host at 192.168.1.130? Why is it asking to connect with EA7300.home.linksys.com?

I believe this fully qualified domain name was incorrectly entered somewhere. An FQDN is the concatenation of a hostname, here EA7300, and a domain name, here home.linksys.com. This domain name is cockamamie. It would belong to LinkSys.

Regards,
Kent

[Post edit]
Aw, nuts. I guess "130 is Moode A=IPV4 AAAA=IPV6" means 192.168.1.130 is the moOde player.

Question is still relevant. Where/how did "EA7300.home.linksys.com" get entered into its configuration?

[HemiRick]

Question is still relevant. Where/how did "EA7300.home.linksys.com" get entered into its configuration?

Thats basically the question.....why is Moode trying to resolve this and where does this name come from. If I knew I think the fix would be obvious. Yes Moode is 192.168.1.130, no 177 on network.

[TheOldPresbyope]

@HemiRick

Sorry for my confusion, I was trying to read the thread and write a post on my cell phone while sitting in a waiting room. I misread some IP numbers from Tim's post as being from you.

Bottom line: I believe you entered this FQDN while configuring moOde. (My guesses include during static IP config and or during the creation of a new source, since you said the router was a Samba server). If you don't know how you did or where it lives now, I'd suggest you just install a fresh copy of moOde and set its static IP config appropriately (using only dotted IP address notation).

---the rest of this is tangential to the above---

Out of curiosity driven by the thought I might find a Pi-hole useful in a future environment, I installed it this evening on a spare RPi. 

For reasons that aren't relevant here, I can not disable DHCP service (which I have, however, restricted to handing out IPs in the range 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.200) on my ISP's router nor can I change its primary/secondary DNS providers. This means I can't test Pi-hole with my entire LAN depending on it.

Nevertheless, I just reconfigured moOde 6.2.0 on an RPi0W to use a static IP address (not relevant, but it's 192.168.1.21), to use the Pi-hole (configured to be 192.168.1.20) as its DNS server, and to use my ISP's router (192.168.1.1) as the gateway. 

As I expected, this partial test "just works", in the sense that this particular moOde player is able to communicate with hosts out on the Internet using their FQDNs. The Pi-hole logs the DNS requests and filters them against its blacklists. 

Of course this moOde player and other hosts on my LAN can communicate with each other only by using their IP addresses in this test because they don't share common DNS.

I don't see in all this where I would ever need to enter either the hostname or the FQDN of my router.

Regards,
Kent

[HemiRick]

I appreciate your effort, but I did not create or enter EA7300.home.linksys.com anywhere.......The 1st time I saw it was in the pi hole log....while investigating this issue.

I would debate the argument that this is a Pi hole support issue and not moode issue. The pi hole just made me aware of what is going on.....It's not the source of the requests, 192.168.1.130 /moode is.

I dont see how reflashing the moode sd card......will fix or change anything as moode is working perfectly otherwise....as it's a unmodified, straight simple 6.1 flash, that i upgraded to 6.2, it did it this same thing w 6.1.

When I was running Moode 5 on the same pi3b+ as pihole, in the past, I do not remember nearly the same large quantity of these requests. They happened but not nearly as frequently, if I remember right they were near the bottom of the list, rather than at the top.

[rb0135]

Just chiming in here.

It is not moode causing this but a mis-configuration of the network/Pi-Hole or something that has been installed alongside Moode on the same IP address (maybe duplicate IP).

A suggestion:
Set the Moode PI to DHCP and see if you get the same result

Some Questions:
1) Is your router a Linksys EA7300 Max-Stream?
2) How is your PI connected (Cable or Wireless)?

I am guessing that you have the router mentioned and it is connected via wireless.

The problem is most likely you are using the external linksys domain on your internal network and since PI-Hole is you DNS server (and not the router) it will try and resolve externally. Your equipment (and the Moode PI would do this too) is probably doing a standard broadcast request to all devices on your network (standard operations on a network), and because you have an external domain running on a local network (internal to your network), the DNS server (PI-Hole) will forward the packet out from the internal network to external network, rather than resolving locally.

You need to change the domain on your DNS server and your DHCP server (usually in a home setup these are the same) to something as simple as HEMIRICK or HEMIRICK.LOCAL or some other name not associated with an external address that is in use now.

I saw you mentioned you have this in you DNS:
my etc/hosts file includes a line ea7300router 192.168.1.1 and that you say "When I ping ea73000router it works fine."

But, that is not what is being looked for for resolving. A quick fix is to put ea7300.home.linksys.com entry and point this to 192.168.1.1

The proper fix though is to fix the domain name of your internal network.

If you used a wizard to configure the router, then it would have picked ea7300.home.linksys.com.


As Tim mentioned, this isn't really the place for Network Support and how fix the settings, but I don't mind answer a few questions provided Tim is OK with this thread continuing.

Regards,
Rob

[HemiRick]

It is not moode causing this but a mis-configuration of the network/Pi-Hole or something that has been installed alongside Moode on the same IP address (maybe duplicate IP).

Answer: There is nothing else using 130, this is the 1st time I've ever used this number on my network. Moode was 135 in the past and I 1st installed pihole on the same hardware, when I moved pihole to its own hardware, since all my other devices had been set to use 135 for DNS, it was just easier to change Moode's IP.

A suggestion:
Set the Moode PI to DHCP and see if you get the same result

Answer: I will try this in the future. Waiting for the etc/hosts change to see if it makes any diff.

Some Questions:
1) Is your router a Linksys EA7300 Max-Stream?    YES
2) How is your PI connected (Cable or Wireless)?   ETHERNET

You need to change the domain on your DNS server and your DHCP server (usually in a home setup these are the same) to something as simple as HEMIRICK or HEMIRICK.LOCAL or some other name not associated with an external address that is in use now.

Answer: I'm using pihole as both DNS, and DHCP the domain is set to "lan"

 A quick fix is to put ea7300.home.linksys.com entry and point this to 192.168.1.1

Answer: I've did this a few hours ago, and am waiting to see result.....so far no change.

The proper fix though is to fix the domain name of your internal network.
Answer: as mentioned previously it is lan, set in pihole, looking at the routers setup, its DHCP is turned off and according to it this is its info:

Current Router Time:
Thursday, 12 September 2019 05:48:00 (GMT -05:00)
Current Browser Time:
Thursday, 12 September 2019 05:48:01 (GMT -05:00)
Internet MAC Address:
24:F5:A2:00:AF:CE
Server Name:
AE7300router
Host Name:
AE7300router
Domain Name:
hsd1.tn.comcast.net.