ddns

A self-hosted Dynamic DNS solution similar to DynDNS or NO-IP.

You can use a hosted version at ddns.pboehm.org where you can register a host under the d.pboehm.de domain (e.g test.d.pboehm.de).

How can I update my IP if it changes?

ddns is built around a small webservice, so that you can update your IP address, simply by calling an URL periodically through curl (using cron). Hosts that haven't been updated for 10 days will be automatically removed. This can be configured in your own instance.

An API similar to DynDNS/NO-IP hasn't been implemented yet.

Self-Hosting

Requirements

• A custom domain where the registrar allows NS-Records for subdomains
• A global accessible Server running an OS which is supported by the tools listed below
• A running Redis instance for data storage
• An installation of PowerDNS with the Pipe-Backend included
• Go 1.3

Installation

The following instructions are valid for Ubuntu/Debian. Some files/packages could have other names/locations, please search for it.

You should have a working Go environment (correct $GOPATH).

$ go version # check that you have go 1.3 installed
go version go1.3 linux/amd64

Then install ddns via:

$ go get github.com/pboehm/ddns
$ ls $GOPATH/bin/ddns # the displayed path will be used later
/home/user/gocode/bin/ddns

Backend

Install pdns and redis-server:

$ sudo apt-get install redis-server pdns-server pdns-backend-pipe

Both services should start at boot automatically. You should open udp/53 and tcp/53 on your Firewall so that pdns can be be used from outside of your host.

$ sudo vim /etc/powerdns/pdns.d/pipe.conf

pipe.conf should have the following content. Please adjust the path of ddns and the values supplied to --domain and --soa_fqdn:

launch=pipe
pipebackend-abi-version=1
pipe-command=/home/user/gocode/bin/ddns --soa_fqdn=dns.example.com --domain=sub.example.com backend

Then restart pdns:

$ sudo service pdns restart

Frontend

ddns includes a webservice which is used for creating new hosts and updating ip addresses. I prefer using nginx as a reverse proxy and not running ddns on port 80. As a process manager, I prefer using supervisord so it is described here.

$ sudo apt-get install nginx supervisor

Create a supervisor config file for ddns:

$ sudo vim /etc/supervisor/conf.d/ddns.conf
$ cat /etc/supervisor/conf.d/ddns.conf
[program:ddns]
directory = /tmp/
user = user
command = /home/user/gocode/bin/ddns --domain=sub.example.com web
autostart = True
autorestart = True
redirect_stderr = True

Restart the supervisor daemon and ddns listens on Port 8080 (can be changed by adding --listen=:1234).

$ sudo service supervisor restart

Now you have to add a nginx virtual host for ddns:

$ sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
$ cat /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
server {
    listen   80;
    server_name  ddns.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
        proxy_set_header    Host            $host;
        proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-for $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_connect_timeout 300;
    }
}

Please adjust the server_name with a valid FQDN. Now we only have to restart nginx:

$ sudo service nginx restart