Lightweight DDNS Updater with Docker and web UI

Light container updating DNS A records periodically for GoDaddy, Namecheap, Dreamhost and DuckDNS

Image size	RAM usage	CPU usage
21.4MB	13MB	Very low

Features

• Updates periodically A records for different DNS providers: Namecheap, GoDaddy, Dreamhost, DuckDNS (ask for more)
• Web User interface

• Lightweight based on Go and Alpine 3.9 with Sqlite and Ca-Certificates packages
• Persistence with a sqlite database

Setup

To setup your domains initially, see the Domain set up section.

Use the following command:

docker run -d -p 8000:8000/tcp -e RECORD1=example.com,@,namecheap,provider,0e4512a9c45a4fe88313bcc2234bf547 qmcgaw/ddns-updater

or use docker-compose.yml with:

docker-compose up -d

You can add persitence by bind mounting the directory /updater/data by adding the flag -v $(pwd)/data:/updater/data for example. Make sure you set the right permissions and ownership to your host data folder:

chown 1000 data/
chmod 700 data/

Environment variables

Environment variable	Default	Description
DELAY	300	Delay between updates in seconds
ROOTURL	/	URL path to append to all paths (i.e. /ddns for accessing https://example.com/ddns)
LISTENINGPORT	8000	Internal TCP listening port for the web UI
RECORDi		A record i to update in the form domain_name,host,provider,ip_method,password
LOGGING	json	Format of logging, json or human
NODEID	0	Node ID (for distributed systems), can be any integer

• The environement variables RECORD1, RECORD2, etc. are domains to update the IP address for
  • The program reads them, starting at RECORD1 and will stop as soon as RECORDn is not set
  • Each must respect the format domain_name,host,provider,ip_method,password
  • The ip_method parameter can be:
    • provider finds your public IP using your DNS provider (Namecheap or DuckDNS only)
    • duckduckgo finds your public IP using https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ip
    • opendns finds your public IP using https://diagnostic.opendns.com/myip
    • 154.251.67.58 sets your public IP as fixed

Host firewall

This container needs the following ports:

• TCP 443 outbound
• UDP 53 outbound
• TCP 8000 inbound (or other) for the WebUI

Domain set up

Namecheap

1. Create a Namecheap account and buy a domain name - example.com as an example
2. Login to Namecheap at https://www.namecheap.com/myaccount/login.aspx

For each domain name you want to add, replace example.com in the following link with your domain name and go to https://ap.www.namecheap.com/Domains/DomainControlPanel/example.com/advancedns

1. For each host you want to add (if you don't know, create one record with the host set to *):

   1. In the HOST RECORDS section, click on ADD NEW RECORD

      

   2. Select the following settings and create the A + Dynamic DNS Record:

      

2. Scroll down and turn on the switch for DYNAMIC DNS

   

3. The Dynamic DNS Password will appear, which is 0e4512a9c45a4fe88313bcc2234bf547 in this example.

   

---

GoDaddy

1. Login to https://developer.godaddy.com/keys with your account credentials.

1. Generate a Test key and secret.

1. Generate a Production key and secret.

Obtain the key and secret of that production key.

In this example, the key is dLP4WKz5PdkS_GuUDNigHcLQFpw4CWNwAQ5 and the secret is GuUFdVFj8nJ1M79RtdwmkZ.

---

DuckDNS

See duckdns website

Dreamhost

Awaiting a contribution

Testing

• The automated healthcheck verifies all your records are up to date using DNS lookups
• You can check manually at:

  • GoDaddy: https://dcc.godaddy.com/manage/yourdomain.com/dns (replace yourdomain.com)

    

    You might want to try to change the IP address to another one to see if the update actually occurs.

  • Namecheap:

  • DuckDNS:

Used in external projects

• Starttoaster/docker-traefik

TODOs

• Unit tests
• Cloudflare DNS registrar
• Read parameters from JSON file
• Finish readme
• Other types or records
• ReactJS frontend
  • Live update of website
  • Change settings