Pi Cloud

Pi Cloud : Dynamic DNS

For Dynamic DNS, I use No-IP, but there are a lot of free and paid options:

Whatever you choose, you’ll need to sign up for an account, and create a hostname.

ddclient

Open your Pi’s console
sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt install -yq ddclient

Note: this installs ddclient without the interactive configuration, since it’s not terribly helpul.

There is a template ddclient.conf, which should have sample configs for all supported dynamic DNS hosting. Find the block that applies to your domain hosting, and

sudo nano /etc/ddclient.conf

Paste in your edited config. For example, this works with no-ip:

  # Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
  #
  # /etc/ddclient.conf

  protocol=noip
  use=web
  login={your email address}
  password={your noip password}
  {your hostname}

Test your config:

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -debug; echo $?

A good result will look something like this:

DEBUG:    proxy  =
DEBUG:    url    = http://checkip.dyndns.org/
DEBUG:    server = checkip.dyndns.org
DEBUG:    get_ip: using web, http://checkip.dyndns.org/ reports 123.45.67.89
DEBUG:
DEBUG:     nic_noip_update -------------------
DEBUG:    proxy  =
DEBUG:    url    = http://dynupdate.no-ip.com/nic/update?system=noip&hostname=myhost.ddns.net&myip=123.45.67.89
DEBUG:    server = dynupdate.no-ip.com
0

Next, you’ll have to set up a cron job to periodically update your IP:

sudo nano /etc/cron.d/ddclient

Paste in the following:

  ######################################################################
  ## ddclient is an IP address updater
  ######################################################################
  ## minute         0-59
  ## hour           0-23
  ## day of month   1-31
  ## month          1-12 (or names, see below)
  ## day of week    0-7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names)
  ######################################################################
  ## request an update daily
  30 23 * * *	root    /usr/sbin/ddclient -daemon=0 -syslog -quiet
    
  ######################################################################
  ## retry failed updates every hour
  0 * * * *	root    /usr/sbin/ddclient -daemon=0 -syslog -quiet retry

[Ctrl+X], [Y], then [Enter]

At this point, you should be good to move on to PiVPN.