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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

DDClient is a Perl client used to update dynamic DNS entries for accounts on Dynamic DNS Network Services' free DNS service - Using with Dyn DNS

I installed DDClient on my Caos Linux Web Server from the Smart App Manager. I used the Caos version. There is another one there too, but I thought that the Caos version might work better in Caos. I set it up from the instructions in the ReadMe file that came with the Download on the Dyn.com DNS Site. And made a config file on the Dyn Site. It ran like is should in the Terminal. After Reboot, I was not sure it if Auto Started...

So, I ran the Start Command for DDClient and it was already running. So, looks like I'm good with Auto Start on my Caos Linux Server. But, I will have to wait until the next IP Address Update from my ISP to see if it is communicating with Dyn DNS, like it should. Here is the Terminal Output for two commands I ran...

Don

[root@bishopco /]# /etc/rc.d/init.d/ddclient start
Starting ddclient:ddclient is running (1995) skipped
[root@bishopco /]#

Here in some info and links on ddclient...

ddclient / Wiki / Home

Index

Important notice

There are a few changes coming.

Because of some recent personal changes I'm not having enough time to work on this project any more. There are only some obvious bugreports which get solved quickly but others stay there forever.
Dyndns decided to change their business model and they stopped offering free account. It made me decide to make dyndns less important for ddclient.
Sourceforge decided to retire the hosted apps which means this trac environment will come to an end. A backup of the old trac can be found on http://ddclient.tisnix.be but all usefull data will be moved to the new environment.

Introduction

DDclient is a Perl client used to update dynamic DNS entries for accounts on Dynamic DNS Network Services' free DNS service. It was originally written by Paul Burry and is now mostly by wimpunk. It has the capability to update more than just dyndns and it can fetch your WAN-ipaddress in a few different ways. Check the configuration pages to find how to do this.
According to cudeso.be:

DDclient is a small but full featured client requiring only Perl and no additional modules. It runs under most UNIX OSes and has been tested under GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. Supported features include: operating as a daemon, manual and automatic updates, static and dynamic updates, optimized updates for multiple addresses, MX, wildcards, abuse avoidance, retrying failed updates, and sending update status to syslog and through e-mail.

News

All news can be found on the news page but this are the lastest messages

You can also check the mailinglist to find out what's going on.

Installation

Most distributions have a recent version of ddclient. Use it unless you really need the latest version. On debian-based systems you can run apt-get install ddclient and it will install ddclient. Unless there is a good reason, you should't use the download link.
Download ddclient-3.8.1.tar.gz
Ddclient doesn't have an automatic installation procedure. Get the tar-file from using the download button and untar it. Copy the perl script to your favorite location (ex. /usr/sbin)
and create a /etc/ddclient/ddclient.conf configuration file. Don't forget to create the cache directory.
If you want the bleeding edge of ddclient, you can access the latest version using svn. Instructions can be found on the code section.
When upgrading just replace the ddclient file by the one from the package, read the release notes and modify the cache file.

Configuration

If you installed ddclient by using the installer of your distribution, it probably already asked you some questions and prepared a useful config file.
There are a few configuration examples provided which you can copy to /etc/ddclient/ddclient.conf and modify. More info about the configuration can be found on the usage page. There's also a sample configuration delivered with ddclient.
A typical configuration like:

# /etc/ddclient/ddclient.conf  #  protocol=dyndns2  use=web  login=mylogin  password=mypassword  myhost.dyndns.org

You can run ddclient as /usr/sbin/ddclient -daemon 300 -syslog and put it in your startup scripts. There are samples of startup scripts provided with ddclient. Most distributions provide a generic startup sample. You can change it to work with ddclient. As there are to many different distributions, ddclient doesn't maintain all of them.

Documentation

The documentation about the configuration has been split into three sections. The usage page describes the most parts of the configuration while the supported protocols page describes the protocol-specific options. If you want to know how to use ddclient with your router, check the supported routers.
Debugging ddclient looks pretty hard but it isn't. First try to put as less as necessary in your configuration. Try to run

./ddclient -daemon=0 -noquiet -debug

and check the result. Try to add the features you need and check it again.
Once you're happy with the result, run it as a daemon.
If this doesn't work for you, there are a few places where you can look for help. If you need any help in configuring ddclient,
You could try ddclient --help. It should give you all the possible configuration options so.
If you think your configuration is correct, but ddclient doesn't work as you expected, you can enable debug and verbose messages by running

ddclient -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet

We know the manual is not very clear, you have to read the example configurations included in the tar-file or you can run ddclient --help to get more help.

Help and bugreporting

If you need extra help, have any bug to report, an enhancement to submit or a feature request, you can create a new ticket or use the ddclient mailing list. Please only post bugs against the latest version of ddclient. The old tracking system can be found on the project page.

Wiki: usage
Wiki: protocols
Wiki: routers

Go there...
http://sourceforge.net/p/ddclient/wiki/Home/