DDclient

guide-by-example

Purpose & Overview

Automatic DNS entries update.

DDclient is a Perl client used to update dynamic DNS records.
Very useful if not having a static IP from the ISP. It makes sure that if you reset your router, or have a power outage, and you get a new public IP assigned, this IP gets automaticly set in the DNS records for your domains.

This setup runs directly on the host machine.
It works by checking every 10 minutes checkip.dyndns.org, and if the IP changed from the previous one, it logs in to the DNS provider and updates the DNS records.

Files and directory structure

/etc/
└── ddclient/
    └── ddclient.conf

Installation

Install ddclient from your linux official repos.

Configuration

Official ddclient config example here.

This setup assumes the DNS records are managed on Cloudflare.
Make sure all subdomains in the config have A-records.

ddclient.conf

daemon=600
syslog=yes
mail=root
mail-failure=root
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
ssl=yes

use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.org/, web-skip='IP Address'

##
## CloudFlare (www.cloudflare.com)
##
protocol=cloudflare,        \
zone=example.com,              \
ttl=1,                      \
login=bastard@gmail.com, \
password=<global-api-key-goes-here> \
example.com,*.example.com,subdomain.example.com

##
protocol=cloudflare,        \
zone=example.org,              \
ttl=1,                      \
login=bastard@gmail.com, \
password=<global-api-key-goes-here> \
example.org,*.example.org,whatever.example.org

Start the service

sudo systemctl enable --now ddclient

Troubleshooting

If it would timeout on start, check the real location of ddclient.pid
sudo find / -name ddclient.pid

If it is correctly set in the ddclient.conf.

Update

During host linux packages update.

Backup and restore

Backup

Using borg that makes daily snapshot of the /etc directory which contains the config file.

restore

Replace the content of the config file with the one from the backup.

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