How to use ddclient on Ubuntu

Check my latest updated blog about ddclient and how to configure it. See https://www.xibel-it.eu/how-to-best-configure-ddclient-for-joker-com-and-udm/

I have a few DNS domains which are pointing to a hosting network with a single IP address. The internet side had changed to a dynamic WAN IP address and now I have to update the DNS addresses with my DNS provider. I tried to do this with my Unifi USG router but the current firmware allows only one protocol at a time. The result is I could use dyndns protocol only once while I need to update three DNS domains pointing to the same Gateway IP address.

This is what I have come up with.

The first domain which is the most important, is updated by the Unifi USG itself. The other two are updated by a client tool called ddclient running on a Ubuntu server in the same network. The funny thing is that the Unifi USG itself also uses ddclient to do the job. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have an Unifi USG. This article is just for installing and configuring ddclient.

I have installed the ddclient package on a Ubuntu server with the following command:

apt-get install ddclient -y

During the installation you will receive some setup questions about your first Dynamic DNS provider. You can safely answer those questions.

After the installation you have access to the following interesting files:

/etc/ddclient.conf	Your personal configuration file where your setup questions went to.Use this file to setup other dynamic DNS providers
/etc/init.d/ddclient	The daemon file which can run the ddclient as a daemon (service)
/etc/default/ddclient	The global parameter file
/usr/share/doc/ddclient/examples/sample-etc_rc.d_init.d_ddclient.ubuntu	Some documentation which came with the package

I will not go into detail how to edit ddclient.conf. There is a lot of information available on the internet. But here is some helpful commands:

To start the ddclient daemon use

service ddclient start

To stop the ddclient daemon use

service ddclient stop

To force a DNS update and log to the syslog use

ddclient -syslog -noquiet -verbose -force

To see the logging in the syslog use

tail -f /var/log/syslog