Dynamic DNS in Zentyal
In order to configure a Dynamic DNS on Zentyal server you can use the following procedure:
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Register an account
First of all, we will need to create a account in one of the available DNS providers. There are several DNS providers that allows you to create a free account, in our case we will use no-ip, but feel free to choose any of the available DNS providers around the web (a full list is available at DMOZ or Dynamic DNS).
Upon registering, you will select a username and password, as well as a hostname that you will use as the DNS name (to allow external access to your machine using the hostname).
Setup Dynamic DNS service updates
At this point we need to setup the DNS updates in order to periodically refresh the desired domain with the correct IP. There are two ways to update the Dynamic DNS service:
- Using the built-in capabilities of a Cable/DSL modem/router. (Review your modem/router technical documentation in order to check if its support Dynamic DNS)
- Using a Dynamic DNS software utility installed in your Zentyal server. In this tutorial we will focus on the utility “ddclient”, but each DNS provider could supply his own tool
ddclient
In order to configure the ddclient utility on your Zentyal server, first of all you will need to install it:
sudo apt-get install ddclient
This will prompt a configuration wizard that allows you to select one of the preconfigured Dynamic DNS providers. In this tutorial we use “no-ip.com”, so we select other:
You will need to configure the name of the server providing dynamic DNS for your specific service:
Afterwards, we will need to select the protocol, in our case dyndns2 (in other case, check your Dynamic DNS provider for this information):
Configure the username that you used to register in your provider:
And the password
Set the interface that will use the Dynamic DNS service (this is useless for no-ip ddclient.conf configuration file):
Input the domain name that you registered for your provider:
And you are finished with the interactive package configuration.
Customizing and launching the service
You will need to modify the file /etc/ddclient.conf, so it looks like this:
# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf # # /etc/ddclient.conf syslog = yes ssl = yes use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com/, web-skip='IP Address' protocol=dyndns2 server=dynupdate.no-ip.com login=somelogin # remember to replace password='somepassword' # remember to replace zentyaltest.no-ip.org # remember to replace
Make sure to change the file according to this example if you are using the no-ip provider, other providers could use a different configuration. Also, if you performed any modification on the file, make sure to restart the ddclient afterwards:
sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient restart
Take in consideration that Zentyal is based on Ubuntu server, so any configuration or customization of this service should be valid for both systems.