MrFSL
December 16th, 2007, 01:58 AM
**EDIT** - bad news, the people over at angelfire have notified me that using their site in this respect is somehow in violation of their user agreement :( -- I will leave this thread here though, as a proof of concept. It can be modified to suit another free web service.
The Situation
You are trying to run a service like a web server from your home but your ISP does not give you a static IP address. You have heard of services like http://www.no-ip.com/ and https://www.dyndns.com/ but you want to use your own domain name and you aren't interested in paying a yearly fee. This little howto will show you how to build your own. It will dynamically update your IP and also send you email notifications and more.
The Solution
You can use free services to build your own Dynamic DNS service. Specifically, you can sign up for a couple free accounts and build a perl script that runs using cron that does all the work for you. (It sounds complex but really it is simple.)
Howto
Step One: Buy a Domain Name
There are a few different Domain Registrars that exist out on the world wide web. I don't promote one over another. I personally use GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/). This howto is not exclusive to GoDaddy though. It should work with any registrar.
Step Two: Set Nameservers
Using the tools provided by your registrar update your nameservers to point to everydns.net . In GoDaddy it looks like this:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~hwdiminished/dns.png
A list of nameservers can be found at: http://www.everydns.net/
Step Three: Register and Setup at EveryDNS
Go to http://www.everydns.net/ and sign up for a free account. Sign in and add your new Domain Name as a dynamic domain:
http://frontiernet.net/~hwdiminished/AddDomain.png
You can check out this link: http://www.everydns.net/dynamic.php to download some free clients to help keep your DNS records up to date. The problem is that these tools do not help you if you are on a NAT network. The rest of this howto involves us building the script that will allow us to update from behind a NAT.
Step Four: Register At Angelfire
Angelfire (http://angelfire.com) is a free web hosting service. We are going to use it for some free webspace. When registering for an angelfire account make sure that your username and password are the same as they were for EveryDNS!
Step Five: Get Dependencies And Edit Script
Here I will go over the update script section by section. Feel free to update the code if you don't like it. Attached will be the final product.
First we set some get all out dependencies:
sudo apt-get install libwww-perl libnet-smtpauth-perl libnet-ip-perl libnet-dns-perl
Next download the attached script: fsl.IPUpdate.pl
These will be the only things you need to edit in the script:
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$domain_name = "NewDomainName.com";
$smtp_server = "YourSMTPServer.com";
$to = 'YourEmailUsername@YourEmail.com';
$from = "SERVER@NewDomainName.com';
username should be the username you used to setup BOTH angelfire and everydns.
password should be the password you used to setup BOTH angelfire and everydns.
NewDomainName.com should be the Domain Name you registered in step one.
YourSMTPServer.com] should by your mail server. This is so the script can send you email notifications. Odds are your ISP supplies you with an SMTP server you can use.
YourEmailUsername@YourEmail.com should be your valid email address where you want notifications sent.
SERVER@NewDomainName.com can be any email address you would like. It does not really matter if it is valid or not. This email address will show up as the sender in your email notifications. You can set this the same as above if you would like.
Step Six: Schedule The Script To Run
I suggest using gnome-schedule for ease of scheduling. If it is not installed:
sudo apt-get install gnome-schedule
Thats it! Your Homebrew Dynamic DNS should now update your IP address records, send you email notifications, and as an added bonus create an angelfire page to redirect you while the DNS updates are propagating.
Hope this helps someone.
The Situation
You are trying to run a service like a web server from your home but your ISP does not give you a static IP address. You have heard of services like http://www.no-ip.com/ and https://www.dyndns.com/ but you want to use your own domain name and you aren't interested in paying a yearly fee. This little howto will show you how to build your own. It will dynamically update your IP and also send you email notifications and more.
The Solution
You can use free services to build your own Dynamic DNS service. Specifically, you can sign up for a couple free accounts and build a perl script that runs using cron that does all the work for you. (It sounds complex but really it is simple.)
Howto
Step One: Buy a Domain Name
There are a few different Domain Registrars that exist out on the world wide web. I don't promote one over another. I personally use GoDaddy (http://www.godaddy.com/). This howto is not exclusive to GoDaddy though. It should work with any registrar.
Step Two: Set Nameservers
Using the tools provided by your registrar update your nameservers to point to everydns.net . In GoDaddy it looks like this:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~hwdiminished/dns.png
A list of nameservers can be found at: http://www.everydns.net/
Step Three: Register and Setup at EveryDNS
Go to http://www.everydns.net/ and sign up for a free account. Sign in and add your new Domain Name as a dynamic domain:
http://frontiernet.net/~hwdiminished/AddDomain.png
You can check out this link: http://www.everydns.net/dynamic.php to download some free clients to help keep your DNS records up to date. The problem is that these tools do not help you if you are on a NAT network. The rest of this howto involves us building the script that will allow us to update from behind a NAT.
Step Four: Register At Angelfire
Angelfire (http://angelfire.com) is a free web hosting service. We are going to use it for some free webspace. When registering for an angelfire account make sure that your username and password are the same as they were for EveryDNS!
Step Five: Get Dependencies And Edit Script
Here I will go over the update script section by section. Feel free to update the code if you don't like it. Attached will be the final product.
First we set some get all out dependencies:
sudo apt-get install libwww-perl libnet-smtpauth-perl libnet-ip-perl libnet-dns-perl
Next download the attached script: fsl.IPUpdate.pl
These will be the only things you need to edit in the script:
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$domain_name = "NewDomainName.com";
$smtp_server = "YourSMTPServer.com";
$to = 'YourEmailUsername@YourEmail.com';
$from = "SERVER@NewDomainName.com';
username should be the username you used to setup BOTH angelfire and everydns.
password should be the password you used to setup BOTH angelfire and everydns.
NewDomainName.com should be the Domain Name you registered in step one.
YourSMTPServer.com] should by your mail server. This is so the script can send you email notifications. Odds are your ISP supplies you with an SMTP server you can use.
YourEmailUsername@YourEmail.com should be your valid email address where you want notifications sent.
SERVER@NewDomainName.com can be any email address you would like. It does not really matter if it is valid or not. This email address will show up as the sender in your email notifications. You can set this the same as above if you would like.
Step Six: Schedule The Script To Run
I suggest using gnome-schedule for ease of scheduling. If it is not installed:
sudo apt-get install gnome-schedule
Thats it! Your Homebrew Dynamic DNS should now update your IP address records, send you email notifications, and as an added bonus create an angelfire page to redirect you while the DNS updates are propagating.
Hope this helps someone.