ddclient and a Linksys Router
Honestly, where would rogue dynamic DNS servers be without a proper DDNS client to point users to? ddclient is an excellent DDNS client for Linux users who need to update their DNS name whenever their IP changes. Unfortunately, ddclient doesn’t seem to work “out of the box” when used behind a Linksys firewall. When ddclient is installed in Debian (with apt-get install ddclient), the install script prompts for the proper values to update your DDNS name. These values are placed into a generic /etc/ddclient.conf configuration file, but won’t update the dyndns.org DDNS service from behind a Linksys router / firewall. After some research on the Internet and some trial and error, I was able to create a ddclient.conf that works. What follows is an /etc/ddclient.conf file that you can modify to use on your Linux server if you’re having the same problems I had. I’ve tested this configuration file with a BEFSR41 Linksys firewall / router.
/etc/ddclient.conf:
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
use=linksys, fw=192.168.1.1:80
# Replace [password] with the Linksys router password
fw-login=user, fw-password=[password]
login=[ddns username]
password=[ddns password] custom=yes
server=members.dyndns.org, \
protocol=dyndns2 \
yourddnsdomain.com
All you have to do is type in the required fields (denoted with the “[" and "]“… don’t type the “[" and "]“, of course!), and change yourddnsdomain.com to your domain name. For a version 2 Linksys router, use “use=linksys-ver2″ and for version 3, “use=linksys-ver3″. The “use” variable tells ddclient what URL to use for the “Status” page. Since the Linksys router doesn’t use a user name, anything really can go after “fw-login=”. I use “user” for simplicity’s sake, even though it doesn’t matter. If your router has a different IP address than 192.168.1.1, then change the address after “fw=”. I’ve only tested this with dyndns.org’s service, but you might be able to use this with other DDNS services if you change the ddns server after “server=”.