README

Update

It's worth noting that I personally stopped using this engine since there is a much better way to just use some dynamic dns service like no-ip or dyndns and adding a cname record to your domain pointing to the domain you selected at those services.

What is this?

This is a Dynamic DNS engine for Dreamhost hosting provider users that want to set up a domain or subdomain to point to their home/work PC with dynamic IP. Please note that this is not truly Dynamic DNS as DNS refresh time on Dreamhost at the time of writing was 4 hours. So any changes to DNS might take almost twice that time to propagate.

Installation

Installation procedure consists of 2 steps:

• Installation of server part.
• Installation of client.

Installation of server part

• First of all you need to place the files under web directory to some place on your hosting which is under the directory to which one of your domains is pointed so that you can access it from web browser (http://www.yourdomain.com/ddns/ for example).
• Edit index.php and insert:
• your Dreamhost API key which you can request in your Control Panel as (dreamhost_api_key key). You must fill in this field.
• your email address to which the update result will be mailed (email key). If email will be left blank no notifications will be sent.
• log file path (log_file_path key) to log everything that happens to a log. It is recommended to place log file upper the domain document root folder so that is isn't accessible from outside. If this field will be left blank no log will be written. Log file must have unix write access (chmod 666 ddns.log).
• Personal key (personal_key key). Your personal unique key which is used to protect ddns update script against everybody's access. You must fill in this field. Every attempt to call your url without a valid key will be reported to an email provided and logged. You can use random.php to generate one. To do that either run in shell php -f random.php or browse to the http://your.domain/your_path/random.php and record the key for later use.
• Domains (ddns_domains key) - an array of domains you wish to use. These must be domains that are pointed to Dreamhost name servers. It still can have only one domain.

Installing client on Linux

• You need to place a script from linux directory to some place on your home/work linux PC.

• Make ddns.sh executable (chmod +x ddns.sh).

• Edit ddns.sh and insert:

• Public url to access your script placed on Dreamhost into PUBLIC_URL

• Your personal unique key generated earlier into PERSONAL_KEY

• Test the script by calling it directly.

• Edit /etc/network/interfaces and insert line

    post-up /etc/ddns/ddns.sh
  

to the interface which connects the web.

Example:

    auto dsl-provider
    iface dsl-provider inet ppp
           pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth1 up # line maintained by pppoeconf
           provider dsl-provider
           post-up /etc/ddns/ddns.sh

• test everything with reconnecting to your provider.

Installing client on Windows

• You need to place a script from windows directory to some place on your home/work windows PC.
• Obtain wget for Windows and place it near the ddns.bat in the windows directory
• Edit ddns.bat and insert (no spaces and quotes needed):
• Public url to access your script placed on Dreamhost into PUBLIC_URL
• Your personal unique key generated earlier into PERSONAL_KEY
• You can change the log file location in LOG_PATH
• Test the script by calling it directly.
• Create a task to launch the script ddns.bat on startup or logon.
• Test everything by loggin on/off or rebooting.

License

The work is provided as is for free without any support guarantee under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license.

Author

The work was made by Oleg Stepura. If you have questions feel free to contact me at github [-at-] oleg.stepura.com