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Notes on setting up a dynamic dns for home with bind-9.x

1. Generating Secure DNS Keys

On the home/client machine:

# mkdir /etc/bind/tsig
# cd /etc/bind/tsig
# dnssec-keygen -a HMAC-MD5 -b 128 -n HOST host.domain.tld.

Note the "." after the tld. This generates the public and the private keys.




2. named.conf

On the remote server:

Edit "/etc/named.conf" and add the generated key to the conf. (Note the trailing dot):

key host.domain.tld. {
        algorithm hmac-md5;
        secret "qUSfVtkYf7WLxiZaOTN3Ua==";
};




3. Grant Authority

Still on the remote server:

Edit the "/etc/bind/zone.domain.tld" file, and modify the current allow-update line to include the key.

allow-update   { key "default_key."; key "host.domain.tld."; };

This allows full authority to modify any record within the domain (Be Warned).

Restart named and make sure nothing is broken.




4. nsupdate

Back to the client machine:

Run nsupdate to test that the client can now make updates.

# nsupdate -k /etc/bind/tsig/Khost.domain.tld.*.key
> update delete host.domain.tld A
> update add host.domain.tld. 600 A 1.2.3.4
> send
> quit

It first deletes host.domain.tld if it already exists, then recreates it with the given TTL, type, and IP address. The TTL is the time-to-live, which is a value used by other DNS servers to determine how often they refresh the entry for this host. A smaller values means they'll refresh more often, which is what you want for a dynamic entry. "send" tells nsupdate to send the updates to the server.




5. Automate

Create a script and put it in a 10 minute cron to check for changes in the wan ip address and run nsupdate automagically.

# cat /etc/cron.d/ddns
SHELL=/bin/sh
*/10 * * * * root /etc/bind/ddns

Below is an example script that gets the info from a Belkin wireless router within the home lan.

#!/bin/bash
# ddns

HOSTNAME="host.domain.tld"
KEYFILE="/etc/bind/tsig/Khost.domain.tld.*.key"
TTL=600
#LOG="/tmp/ddns_log"
LOG="/dev/null"
IP_FILE="/tmp/ddns_ip"

NEW_IP=`wget -q -O - 192.168.2.1 | grep "Up.*dw" | tr "\n" " " | awk -F "'" '{print $12}'`

function do_nsupdate {
        echo "New IP address (${NEW_IP}) found. Updating..." >> $LOG
        echo $NEW_IP > $IP_FILE
        nsupdate -k $KEYFILE >> $LOG << EOF
        update delete $HOSTNAME A
        update add $HOSTNAME $TTL A $NEW_IP
        send
        quit
EOF
}

if [ ! -f $IP_FILE ]; then
        echo "Creating $IP_FILE..." >> $LOG
        do_nsupdate
else
        OLD_IP=`cat $IP_FILE`
        if [ "$NEW_IP" = "$OLD_IP" ]; then
                echo "new and old IPs (${OLD_IP}) are same. Exiting..." >> $LOG
                exit 0
        else
                do_nsupdate
        fi
fi

exit 0