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I've created accounts and hostnames within my http://no-ip.org/ account, which is by far the most commonly used service for my type of server. Can somebody walk me through the configuration process of using ddclient with no-ip, as I'm a command line noob?

Setting up ddclient for No-IP

ddclient is a Dynamic Update Client (DUC) which can be used to update dynamic DNS entries. It checks the current IP address at regular intervals and updates the DNS information when a change is detected. Here is how to install and configure it for the No-IP (noip.com/no-ip.com) service.

First, install the ddclient package. We will configure it manually later, so just press enter for all configuration questions.

sudo apt-get install ddclient

Stop the ddclient daemon. The sudo service ddclient stop command does not work on Ubuntu 12.04 due to a bug, so we use pkill instead.

sudo pkill ddclient

Edit the config files. To turn off the backup files (e.g. /etc/ddclient.conf~) which gedit creates by default and which could for example contain passwords after you thought you had deleted them, turn off the setting
Edit -> Preferences -> Editor -> Create a backup copy of files before saving.

sudo gedit /etc/ddclient.conf /etc/default/ddclient

Delete the old content of /etc/ddclient.conf and paste in the template shown below.

Read through the comments of the template and customize the file to your needs.

It could be a good idea to use a noip.com sub-account, i.e. a group with password (this feature is a pay-service). This way, the password only gives access to updating the specified hosts and not full access to your entire No-IP account, which could include MX records (an attacker which acquires your password could change the MX records in order to intercept your e-mails) or other services such as IMAP accounts.

You should probably set daemon_interval=3600 (see template comments).

Test your configuration with the following command:

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet -force

You should get a good (IP address updated) or nochg (IP address was already set to that value) response. It is OK to receive the following warning at this point (but it is not OK to keep getting the warning during normal operation):

WARNING: updating <hostname>: nochg: No update required; unnecessary attempts to change to the current address are considered abusive

Note: There seems to be some caching going on at the No-IP server, so if the response you get from the server is not what you expect, it might help to just wait a little while.

When you are done configuring, start the ddclient daemon:

sudo service ddclient start

The daemon will also start automatically each time you start the computer.

The DNS entry/entries will now be updated each time an IP address change is detected.

Troubleshooting

Run package configuration again:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure ddclient

Remove package and config files:

sudo apt-get purge ddclient

Daemon control:

sudo service ddclient status

sudo service ddclient start

sudo service ddclient stop

# The stop command above does not work on Ubuntu 12.04 due to a bug, but

# it works on 14.04. Here are alternative ways to control the daemon:

ps -A f | grep -i ddclient

sudo pkill ddclient

Delete the cache to trick the daemon into updating the DNS entry for debugging purposes (during normal operation the DNS entry is only updated if the current IP address is different from the IP address stored in the cache):

sudo pkill ddclient

sudo rm /var/cache/ddclient/ddclient.cache

sudo service ddclient start

# See the result:

tail /var/log/syslog

# If you have set up mail=..., you should also receive an e-mail.

# The syslog and e-mail should show a "good" or "nochg" response.

Test whether the daemon will actually update the DNS entry when the IP address has changed, by setting the DNS entry IP address to 1.2.3.4 and then starting the daemon:

sudo pkill ddclient

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet -force -use ip -ip 1.2.3.4

sleep 30   # ddclient will not perform updates less than 30 seconds apart

sudo service ddclient start

Debug run (update DNS entry never / as needed / always):

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet -noexec

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet -force

Try to detect current IP address using various methods:

sudo ddclient -query

Files of interest:

/etc/ddclient.conf

/etc/default/ddclient

/var/cache/ddclient/ddclient.cache

Messages from the daemon will appear here (and will also be sent by e-mail if set up to do so):

/var/log/syslog

Documentation:

• ddclient -help


• /usr/share/doc/ddclient/examples/sample-etc_ddclient.conf.gz


• ddclient home page


• No-IP protocol

Template for /etc/ddclient.conf

################################################################################

# Configuration file for ddclient

################################################################################





################################################################################

# Misc. configurations



# To choose between ipup mode (for dial-on-demand) and daemon mode, please edit

# /etc/default/ddclient.



#mail=root           # E-mail messages to this address

#mail-failure=root   # E-mail messages about failed updates to this address





################################################################################

# How to obtain current IP address



# Methods:

#   use=ip, ip=ADDRESS                                   # Set the IP address to ADDRESS

#   use=if, if=INTERFACE, if-skip=PATTERN                # Obtain IP address by calling 'ifconfig INTERFACE'

#   use=web, web=PROVIDER|URL, web-skip=PATTERN          # Obtain IP address from IP discovery web page

#   use=cmd, cmd=PROGRAM, cmd-skip=PATTERN               # Obtain IP address by calling PROGRAM

#   use=fw|FWMODEL, fw=ADDRESS|URL, fw-skip=PATTERN      # Obtain IP address from firewall web page

#                   fw-login=LOGIN, fw-password=SECRET

#

# The *-skip options can be used to skip IP addresses found before PATTERN.

#

# NOTE: The ddclient IP detection routines do not respect the HTTPS prefix in

# URLs, and instead fall back to HTTP (this is fixed in version 3.8.1). The

# option ssl=yes does not apply to the IP detection either (this is at least

# how versions 3.8.0 to 3.8.2 behave).

#

# The default time between each IP address change check is daemon_interval=300

# (5 minutes), which may be a bit too frequent when using an external IP

# discovery service. To set the checking interval to e.g. one hour instead,

# please edit /etc/default/ddclient and set daemon_interval=3600.



# Obtain IP address from network interface

#use=if, if=eth0



# Obtain IP address from no-ip.com IP discovery web page (unencrypted connection)

use=web, web='http://ip1.dynupdate.no-ip.com:8245/'



# Obtain IP address from no-ip.com IP discovery web page (encrypted connection)

# Encryption does not offer any real protection since a man-in-the-middle

# attack could route the HTTPS connection through a host belonging to the

# attacker, thus causing an incorrect IP address to be reported.

#use=cmd, cmd='bash -c "set -o pipefail; timeout 120 wget -qO- 

#  --header=Host:ip1.dynupdate.no-ip.com https://dynupdate.no-ip.com/ | head -c 1000"'





################################################################################

# Dynamic DNS service setup



protocol=noip

#server=   # Defaults to dynupdate.no-ip.com for noip protocol

ssl=yes   # NOTE: Does not apply when obtaining IP address, just when updating the DNS entry!

login='nobody@nowhere.com'   # Username. For No-IP sub-accounts (groups with passwords), use '<groupname>%3A<username>'.

password='1234'





################################################################################

# Hosts to update, with optional per-host options



# Examples:

#   protocol=hammernode1, 

#   login='my-hn-login', password='my-hn-password' 

#   myhost.hn.org,myhost2.hn.org

#

#   login='group2%3Ajohndoe@domain.com', password='1234'   myhost3.no-ip.biz,myhost4.no-ip.biz

#

#   myhost.no-ip.biz,myhost2.no-ip.biz



my.full.hostname

Update: Encrypted connection to IP detection service is quite pointless. This is now explained in the ddclient.conf template and it now defaults to using unencrypted connection for IP detection.

Here is a good walkthrough...
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/update-ip-addresses-at-dynamic-dns-services-using-ddclient.html

Hope this helps :)

No-ip has its own client which worked for me first time it was installed.

There are instructions on their own website to download the client, and then it's a quick make && make install and you're done. Have your login credentials for no-ip to hand as you will be asked them as part of the configuration wizard. Afterwards, make sure you run noip2 and you can check your host account on their site to see if it has updated.