myDDNS

A simple script that works as a self-hosted Dynamic DNS (DDNS) by checking the checking the network's current public IP address, comparing it with the content of a DNS record on Cloudflare, then then updating the DNS record if necessary.

Important

As it is now, this script only works with Cloudflare as a DNS provider/registrar.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• cloudflare (cloudflare-python)
• requests
• python-dotenv

Setup

1. Clone this repository and navigate into it

   git clone https://github.com/mzalal/my_ddns
   cd my_ddns

2. Create a virtual environment and activate it

   python -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate

Tip

Depending on your system, you may need to use python3 instead of python.

3. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Create a .env file with the following environment variables

   # The API token should have DNS edit permissions
   CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN=API_TOKEN_HERE
   
   # The DNS record name (domain/subdomain)
   DNS_RECORD_NAME=example.com
   # The ID of the DNS record
   CLOUDFLARE_DNS_RECORD_ID=DNS_RECORD_ID_HERE
   # The ID of the zone the DNS record belongs to
   CLOUDFLARE_ZONE_ID=ZONE_ID_HERE

5. Run the script

   python my_ddns.py

   That should be it. But if any error occurs, you should check the log file (my_ddns.log) that is generated in the same directory as the script itself.

myDDNS as a system service

To get the most of myDDNS, you can run it as a system service through systemd or as a cron job. And to automatically run myDDNS on 1 minute time intervals using systemd, create the following two files in /etc/systemd/system:

• my-ddns.service:

  [Unit]
  Description=myDDNS
  After=network-online.target
  Wants=network-online.target
  
  [Service]
  Type=oneshot
  # Change depending on where you placed .venv and my_ddns.py
  ExecStart=/path/to/python/executable /path/to/my_ddns.py
  
  [Install]
  WantedBy=multi-user.target

• my-ddns.timer:

  [Unit]
  Description=Run my-ddns.service 10s after boot and every 1m after that
  
  [Timer]
  # Run my-ddns.service 10 seconds after the system boots
  OnBootSec=10s
  # Then run it every minute after that
  OnUnitActiveSec=1m
  Unit=my-ddns.service
  
  [Install]
  WantedBy=timers.target

Then start and enable my-ddns.timer:

sudo systemctl start my-ddns.timer
sudo systemctl enable my-ddns.timer

License

myDDNS is licensed under the MIT license.