DynDNS Auto Login

DynDNS have added a new stipulation to their free dynamic domain name accounts that you must log in to the site at least once a month; otherwise, you will lose your account.

Not being a fan of doing things manually, I took the lazy pragmatic approach and wrote a script to do it for me. It's designed to be run under a Heroku instance.

It also will email you when the script breaks for any reason. This application is for educational purposes only - I can't guarantee that it will actually count as an official login for DynDNS's purposes, but so far it seems to work for me

Steps for local installation:

1. Install the Heroku Bootstrap / Ruby if you haven't done so already. Make sure to install the gem bundler if you haven't already

   gem install bundler

2. Download the script

   git clone https://github.com/shaunmccarthy/DynDNS.git

3. Configure it to run locally

   Note: on some systems, you need to use export, not set.

   set dyndns_username=yourdyndnsusername
   set dyndns_password=yourdyndnspassword

   If you want to be emailed whenever there is an error:

   set error_email_from=[email protected]
   set error_email_from_password=notyourmainaccountunlessyoulikebeinghacked
   set error_email_to=[email protected]

4. Install the package locally (make sure you have installed the bundler first)

   bundle install

   You might need to comment out the gem "psych" line in Gemfile to get it to run locally. You will need to put it back in before deploying to Heroku as they use syck by default to parse yaml.

5. Test it locally with

   ruby dyndns_login.rb

6. Optional: add a .bash file where you set the environment variables, and start if from crontab.

   Weekly crontab entry (edit using crontab -e):

   @weekly /bin/bash ~/dyndns_login.bash

   ~/dyndns_login.bash file:

   #!/bin/bash #http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/07/cron-every-5-minutes/ #http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15557777/crontab-job-does-not-get-the-environment-variables-set-in-bashrc-file export dyndns_username=foo export dyndns_password=baz ruby ~/DynDNS/dyndns_login.rb

Remote Installation: Heroku

1. Create a Heroku account

2. Follow the quick start to get your account up and running here

   https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/quickstart

   Note where the public key is generated, as you may need this if you get the dreaded "Permission denied (publickey)." error.

   See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4269922/permission-denied-publickey-when-deploying-heroku-code-fatal-the-remote-end for more details. ssh-keygen can be found in C:\program files\git\bin

3. Push the code to Heroku

   git push heroku master

   This is where you might come across the SSH error above - follow the instructions in the stack overflow article

4. Set the environment variables

   heroku config:set dyndns_username=yourdyndnsusername
   heroku config:set dyndns_password=yourdyndnspassword

   If you want to be emailed whenever there is an error:

   heroku config:set error_email_from=[email protected]
   heroku config:set error_email_from_password=notyourmainaccountunlessyoulikebeinghacked
   heroku config:set error_email_to=[email protected]

5. Test the code on Heroku

   heroku run ruby dyndns_login.rb

Heroku: Scheduling

1. Add the scheduler plugin

   heroku addons:add scheduler:standard

   You might need to validate your account since you potentially could go over your free limit depending on how often you run this (very very unlikely though). Use at own risk :)

2. Open the scheduler screen

   heroku addons:open scheduler

3. Schedule the task to happen daily

   $ ruby dyndns_login.rb

Sit back and wait for it to run :)

Feedback:

Any questions, email me at [email protected]