DDClient systemd service setup with Namecheap

ddclient.md

DDClient setup

Warning: I believe the paths to be outdated, as DDClient docs point to /etc/ddclient/ddclient.conf instead of /etc/ddclient.conf. However, this document should still work regardless.

Quick and easy steps to get DDClient running with Namecheap and as a systemd service on Ubuntu Server OS.

• Installation
• Configuration
• Check if it works
• Run ddclient as a service

Installation

Use apt to easily install ddclient:

sudo apt install ddclient

When prompted with a GUI to configure ddclient, feel free to either fill in information correctly, or to simply skip it and configure it in a later step. You will have to configure it manually anyways though.

Configuration

You'll first have to enable "Dynamic DNS" on Namecheap to get a password.

In order to configure ddclient to work with Namecheap, run sudo nano /etc/ddclient.conf and make sure these Namecheap settings are applied:

use=web, web=dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com/getip
protocol=namecheap
server=dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com
login=YOUR_DOMAIN.COM
password=YOUR_PASSWORD
YOUR_HOST_1,YOUR_HOST_2,YOUR_HOST_3

Check if it works

Verify your configuration is correctly set up:

sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -verbose

You should get something like:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo ddclient -daemon=0 -verbose
CONNECT:  dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com
CONNECTED:  using HTTP
SENDING:  GET /getip HTTP/1.0
SENDING:   Host: dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com
SENDING:   User-Agent: ddclient/3.9.1
SENDING:   Connection: close
SENDING:   
SENDING:   
RECEIVE:  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
RECEIVE:  Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2022 11:44:27 GMT
RECEIVE:  Content-Type: text/html
RECEIVE:  Connection: close
RECEIVE:  CF-Cache-Status: DYNAMIC
RECEIVE:  Server: cloudflare
RECEIVE:  
RECEIVE:  123.123.123.123
SUCCESS:  YOUR_HOST_1: skipped: IP address was already set to 123.123.123.123.
SUCCESS:  YOUR_HOST_2: skipped: IP address was already set to 123.123.123.123.
SUCCESS:  YOUR_HOST_3: skipped: IP address was already set to 123.123.123.123.

Run ddclient as a service

In order to get ddclient to start on system boot, you need to run it as a systemd service:

sudo systemctl enable ddclient.service
sudo systemctl start ddclient.service

Information taken from this Gist (which seems to be invalid last time I checked), there's some troubleshooting help there which may be useful if you're running into errors.