the only way to use a dns server right now is with the ext clients

for those you can just set the "default ext client dns" field on the network, and the ext clients will get the DNS= entry

so you would just set that to your pihole address

Setting coredns to not use 53 (mapping it to 54) seems to let netmaker start, but having pi-hole on port 53 now and setting my DNS to the address of the netmaker server seems to just keep using coredns/redirect it to the default fallback DNS for coredns

by default, we do some port forwarding where DNS requests on the private network automatically route to netmaker, setting DNS_MODE to off should resolve that

So the DNS tab not going to off I think might be related to me having set it up with the quick and the vpn setup argument. Did a clean install without that and I can set DNS_MODE to off and it seems to behave as it should. However.. When I comment out the CoreDNS lines in my docker-compose, it seems like everything breaks and even though I've set it up with an account and all, I get sent to the create and admin prompt, which if I fill out fails to reach server and refreshing gives me connection refused, a ctrl+shift+r brings me back to the create admin prompt. Uncommenting the CoreDNs lines brings me to the normal login and everything seems fine

Followed by exited with code 2

port forward services

set PORT_FORWARD_SERVICES=""

Makes sense

Neat got it all figured out

Did a quick writeup for what I had to do to configure everything as a pihole'd vpn:

So if anyone stumbles over this when searching, this is what I did to get pihole working with netmaker as a vpn:

Install netmaker as normal with the installer script on github, after it is up and running and you've confirmed that it works do the following:
Stop the containers (docker-compose down)
Edit the docker-compose.yml:
    1. change 'DNS_MODE: "on"' to 'DNS_MODE: "off"'
    2. change 'PORT_FORWARD_SERVICES: "dns"' to 'PORT_FORWARD_SERVICES: ""'
    3. Comment out every line for coredns (you don't need it anymore, probably)
    4. add a standard pihole setup from the pi-hole github instructions for pihole, but change ports 80 to 8080, and add 'WEB_PORT: 8080' under environment.
Start the containers again (docker-compose up)
Bash into the pihole container (docker exec -it pihole bash)
Set a new password for pihole (pihole -a -p) and exit it
Port forward 8080 if you haven't for pihole
Go into the pihole webui, and make sure DNS is set to allow only local requests
Run the command "docker network inspect root_default" on your server and find the IPv4Adress for your pihole docker
In the netmaker ui, setup a new network, and go to the newly created node and make it an ingress and egress node
Go to the newly created network, and set "Default Ext Client DNS" to the ip address for the pihole docker that you grabbed earlier

Add an external client, add it to your wireguard on your phone/laptop/smart toaster, and you're up and running with a pihole'd VPN.
Un-portforward your pihole webui, it can be accessed on the open internet currently, you want that to only be available when on vpn

I have no clue if that internal docker IP for pihole will change (I assume it might) but that's a problem for another time