Problem with Pihole DNS

General system Applications
1

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue where web pages take forever to start loading, but only on my EndeavourOS PC. Other devices (like my phone) on the same network work perfectly.

  • OS: EndeavourOS

  • Primary DNS: Pi-hole (local IP)

  • Secondary DNS: 8.8.8.8

It feels like a DNS timeout issue (huge delay before the page loads). I suspect NetworkManager or systemd-resolved might be handling the primary/secondary DNS incorrectly.

Any ideas how to fix this slow lookup on Arch? I have download speed 130mbps. Thanks

2

Can you post the output of

dig endevouros.com

? dig is part of the package dnsutils, maybe you must install it first

3

Okay, this is output

[bambuskooo@BAMBUSKOOO ~]$ dig https://endeavouros.com/

; <<>> DiG 9.20.23 <<>> https://endeavouros.com/
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 3547
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;https://endeavouros.com/.	IN	A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.			86400	IN	SOA	a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2026053000 1800 900 604800 86400

;; Query time: 18 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.225#53(192.168.1.225) (UDP)
;; WHEN: Sat May 30 12:35:27 CEST 2026
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 128
4

Do you have another computer in your network? What phone is your phone? What is the actual DNS resolver of the pi-hole?

5

Yes, I have a Windows PC on the same network and everything loads snappy and fast there. My phone is a CMF Phone (Android) and it works perfectly fine too.

Regarding the Pi-hole/OpenWrt upstream resolvers, they are configured to use:

  • Primary: 10.129.0.129

  • Secondary: 192.185.10.185

6

Seems fast enough I would say. What if you disable all blocking in Pihole, does that speed up things?

Isn’t 10.129.0.129 your pihole server. The dig you made, was answered by Secondary: 192.185.10.185.

Does it answer if you do

nslookup endeavouros.com 10.129.0.129

7

Yes, if I turn off Pihole, it speeds up by 10 times, no, the server 10.129.0.129 is not pihole, it is an upstream address from the ISP, here is the output from nslookup endeavoros.com 10.129.0.129, thanks.

nslookup endeavouros.com 10.129.0.129
Server:		10.129.0.129
Address:	10.129.0.129#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	endeavouros.com
Address: 85.214.143.21
8

You should disable secondary DNS if you want to only use your Pi-hole. It is not a used in case the pihole is unavailable. It is used in parallel in some weird random fashion.

The delay you see may be caused by asking one DNS and when it fails it tries again at 8.8.8.8.

You can try to simplify your network by setting your PC DNS to be the pihole. In pihole set upstream DNS to be only 8.8.8.8. That way it is not at random and you should always see the same performace. And since google’s dns are pretty high performace you should see it works or not but should not cause slow page loading.
When the loading speed is good in this configuration then you may try the other upstream dns.

Also if you use DHCP then make sure it offers only pihole as DNS.
And if you use Firefox then check settings under security if you have DNS over HTTPS enabled. I think that may collide with pihole function as well.