dyndnsd.rb

A small, lightweight and extensible DynDNS server written with Ruby and Rack.

Description

dyndnsd.rb is aimed to implement a small DynDNS-compliant server in Ruby. It has an integrated user and hostname database in it's configuration file that is used for authentication and authorization. Besides talking the DynDNS protocol it is able to invoke an so-called updater, a small Ruby module that takes care of supplying the current host => ip mapping to a DNS server.

The is currently one updater shipped with dyndnsd.rb command_with_bind_zone that writes out a zone file in BIND syntax onto the current system and invokes a user-supplied command afterwards that is assumed to trigger the DNS server (not necessarily BIND since it's zone files are read by other DNS servers too) to reload it's zone configuration.

Because of the mechanisms used dyndnsd.rb is known to work only on *nix systems.

General Usage

Install the gem:

gem install dyndnsd

Create a configuration file in YAML format somewhere:

# listen address and port
host: "0.0.0.0"
port: "80"
# optional: drop priviliges in case you want to but you may need sudo for external commands
user: "nobody"
group: "nogroup"
# logfile is optional, logs to STDOUT else
logfile: "dyndnsd.log"
# interal database file
db: "db.json"
# all hostnames are required to be cool-name.example.org
domain: "example.org"
# configure the updater, here we use command_with_bind_zone, params are updater-specific
updater:
  name: "command_with_bind_zone"
  params:
    zone_file: "dyn.zone"
    command: "echo 'Hello'"
    ttl: "5m"
    dns: "dns.example.org."
    email_addr: "admin.example.org."
# user database with hostnames a user is allowed to update
users:
  # 'foo' is username, 'secret' the password
  foo:
    password: "secret"
    hosts:
      - foo.example.org
      - bar.example.org
  test:
    password: "ihavenohosts"

Run dyndnsd.rb by:

dyndnsd /path/to/config.yaml

Using dyndnsd.rb with NSD

NSD is a nice opensource, authoritative-only, low-memory DNS server that reads BIND-style zone files (and converts them into it's own database) and has a simple config file.

A feature NSD is lacking is the Dynamic DNS update functionality BIND offers but one can fake it using the following dyndnsd.rb config:

host: "0.0.0.0"
port: "8245" # the DynDNS.com alternative HTTP port
db: "/opt/dyndnsd/db.json"
domain: "dyn.example.org"
updater:
  name: "command_with_bind_zone"
  params:
    # make sure to register zone file in your nsd.conf
    zone_file: "/etc/nsd3/dyn.example.org.zone"
    # fake DNS update (discards NSD stats)
    command: "nsdc rebuild; nsdc reload"
    ttl: "5m"
    dns: "dns.example.org."
    email_addr: "admin.example.org."
    # specify additional raw BIND-style zone content
    # here: an A record for dyn.example.org itself
    additional_zone_content: "@ IN A 1.2.3.4"
users:
  foo:
    password: "secret"
    hosts:
      - foo.example.org  

Start dyndnsd.rb before NSD to make sure the zone file exists else NSD complains.

Using dyndnsd.rb with X

Please provide ideas if you are using dyndnsd.rb with other DNS servers :)

Advanced topics

Update URL

The update URL you want to tell your clients (humans or scripts ^^) consists of the following

http[s]://[USER]:[PASSWORD]@[DOMAIN]:[PORT]/nic/update?hostname=[HOSTNAMES]&myip=[MYIP]

where:

• the protocol depends on your (webserver/proxy) settings
• USER and PASSWORD are needed for HTTP Basic Auth and valid combinations are defined in your config.yaml
• DOMAIN should match what you defined in your config.yaml as domain but may be anything else when using a webserver as proxy
• PORT depends on your (webserver/proxy) settings
• HOSTNAMES is a required list of comma separated FQDNs (they all have to end with your config.yaml domain) the user wants to update
• MYIP is optional and the HTTP client's address will be used if missing

SSL, multiple listen ports

Use a webserver as a proxy to handle SSL and/or multiple listen addresses and ports. DynDNS.com provides HTTP on port 80 and 8245 and HTTPS on port 443.

Init scripts

The Debian 6 init.d script assumes that dyndnsd.rb is installed into the system ruby (no RVM support) and the config.yaml is at /opt/dyndnsd/config.yaml. Modify to your needs.

License

dyndnsd.rb is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for more information.