Shane A. Stillwell
Updating Namecheap DDNS using BASH, CURL, and good 'ol know how.

Updating Namecheap DDNS using BASH, CURL, and good 'ol know how.

#Server Admin

Hold on Cowboy

This blog post is pretty old. Be careful with the information you find in here. It's likely dead, dying, or wildly inaccurate.

I have a server at home that I use to do snapshot style backups using rsync. As such, I’d like to be able to connect to it from time to time when not at home. This is a simple way to update your Dynamic DNS with NameCheap.

Create a file called ddns and place it in /etc/cron.daily and set the permissions to 700

#!/bin/bash
# Update NameCheap DDNS 

# Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with jackson.io, it may not work when you read this.  
# It's just fetching your URL as plain text.  If you had a webserver it would be simple
# to write your own whatismyip service.
IP=$(exec wget -q -O - http://jackson.io/ip/)

curl -s -o temp.html "http://dynamicdns.park-your-domain.com/update?domain=YOURDOMAINNAME&password=YOURVERYLONGPASSWORDFROMNAMECHEAP&host=YOURHOSTNAME&ip=${IP}"

You’ll want to change some of the variables in the long URL. After that, it will update NameCheap DDNS on a nightly basis. No more need for a static IP.