Dynamic DNS Script for Namecheap.com
I have an Apache 2.2 web server running Debian Etch Linux on cable broadband Internet. My Internet Service Provider(like many others) charges way too much for static IP addresses. So the problem that I have is that my ISP frequently changes my IP, so static domain name resolution would suck. Also, I got lucky and my ISP leaves HTTP port 80 open. The solution to my problem is registering my domain with a domain registrar that offers dynamic DNS. I have chosen Namecheap.com because they offer dynamic DNS and have free whois protection. I checked out the Namecheap.com knowledge base to see exactly how their dynamic DNS works. There are a few clients that support Namecheap.com dynamic DNS for Windows. There is ddclient which supports Linux, but I decided since it was only a HTTP GET request I would just write a quick Perl script to do the task. The only requirement is that you have the LWP module installed. I setup a crontab so that every 10 minutes the script is called like this:
0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /home/dns/dynamicdns-namecheap-v1.pl >/dev/null 2>&1
You can download the Dynamic DNS Script for Namecheap.com here and the source is below.
#!/usr/bin/perl
#Perl script to update Dynamic DNS for Namecheap.com
#dynamicdns-namecheap-v1.pl
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
my($ip, @hosts, $host, $domain, $domainpw, $url, $content);
@hosts = ("www","*");
$domain = "yourdynamicdnsdomainname.com";
$domainpw = "yourdynamicdnsdomainpassword";
$ip = `ifconfig eth0 |grep inet | awk \-F \: \'\{print \$2\}\' | awk \'\{print \$1\}\'`;
foreach $host (@hosts) {
$url = "http://dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com/update?host=".
$host."&domain=".$domain."&password=".$domainpw."&ip=".
$ip;
$content = get($url);
die "cant connect to dubdubdub" unless defined $content;
print $content."\n"; # uncomment for output
}
