Configure DNS

It's often useful to be able to access machines on our local LAN's from other locations. Most of the LAN's we need to access machines on do not have static IP addresses, so a Dynamic DNS solution is used to keep a domain name up to date with the current IP address.

Our .com domain host is namecheap.com and they provide a free dynamic DNS solution allowing simple HTTP query-string based method of updating a sub-domain. We just add a single entry to /etc/crontab which looks like this (replace SUB, DOMAIN and PASS with your specific settings):

*/10 * * * * nobody wget -q --spider "http://dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com/update?host=SUB&domain=DOMAIN&password=PASS"

See also

• DynamicDNS.pl - the script we used to use to update DNS records only when router's external IP changes