Dynamic DNS Setup In Ubuntu Using DynDNS

I use Dyndns.org for dynamic domain services. There is easy setup and you can update your IP via a web browser, or schedule an application to run on a regular basis. Updating your IP address is important because you will lose your domain if you don’t update your record every 30-35 days. Here is a basic guide.

In Debian/Ubuntu you can install the updater via apt:

sudo apt-get install ipcheck

Create bin directory, dyndns directory and updater script:

mkdir ~/bin mkdir ~/.dyndns touch ~/bin/dyndns-update.sh chmod 700 ~/bin/dyndns-update.sh vi ~/bin/dyndns-update.sh

#!/bin/sh USERNAME=yourusername PASSWORD=yourpassword HOSTNAME=your.domain.name cd ~/.dyndns if [ -f ~/.dyndns/ipcheck.dat ]; then /usr/sbin/ipcheck -r checkip.dyndns.org:8245 \ $USERNAME $PASSWORD $HOSTNAME else /usr/sbin/ipcheck --makedat -r checkip.dyndns.org:8245 \ $USERNAME $PASSWORD $HOSTNAME fi

Edit your crontab:

crontab -e

Add the following line to your crontab to run the script daily.

* 6 * * * /home/username/bin/dyndns-update.sh

User Driven Sites

Today digg.com was completely spammed by user submitted articles about the HD-DVD media access key. Digg admins rightly decided to censor and ban users posting the number to avoid legal consequences. I only hope that the community driven site I am making doesn’t suffer from similar problems.