Configure ddclient IP updater for OpenDNS on Ubuntu 18.04 or Debian 10 Buster

Authmane Terki
2 min readApr 2, 2020

--

Hello,

First install ddclient:

sudo apt install ddclient

This will open its shell-based UI. Put whatever, as we’re going to change that later.

Edit /etc/ddclient.conf as follow:

##
## OpenDNS.com account-configuration
##
protocol=dyndns2
use=web, web=myip.dnsomatic.com
ssl=yes
server=updates.opendns.com
login=<opendns e-mail>
password='<opendns password>'
<Name of the network you set up in OpenDNS>

Edit /etc/default/ddclient as follow:

# Configuration for ddclient scripts 
# generated from debconf on Sun Jun 24 00:08:13 EDT 2018
#
# /etc/default/ddclient

# Set to "true" if ddclient should be run every time DHCP client ('dhclient'
# from package isc-dhcp-client) updates the systems IP address.
run_dhclient="false"

# Set to "true" if ddclient should be run every time a new ppp connection is
# established. This might be useful, if you are using dial-on-demand.
run_ipup="false"

# Set to "true" if ddclient should run in daemon mode
# If this is changed to true, run_ipup and run_dhclient must be set to false.
run_daemon="true"

# Set the time interval between the updates of the dynamic DNS name in seconds.
# This option only takes effect if the ddclient runs in daemon mode.
daemon_interval="300"

Check that it works:

$ sudo ddclient -verbose -file /etc/ddclient.conf

When the above command is run for the first time, the last line of the output should represent:

SUCCESS:  updating Home: good: IP address set to xx.xx.xx.xx

If the command is repeated, the last line of the output should represent:

SUCCESS:  Home: skipped: IP address was already set to xx.xx.xx.xx

Make ddclient automatically start when system boots:

sudo systemctl start ddclient
sudo systemctl enable ddclient

Sources

--

--