Dydns question

phil.davis

case 0:
	$status = "phpDynDNS ({$this->_dnsHost}): (Success) IP address is current, no update performed.";
	$successful_update = true;
	break;

"noip" seems to return a "0" status in this case, which someone in the past has interpreted (seemingly correctly!) as meaning that "noip" already has that address (which it does) and is choosing not to update anything (including the 'last update' date).
This is probably the root cause of the problem - "noip" is not recording updates of the same address that are done in this automated fashion. It probably does let you go for 25 days without doing an update.
I guess that when you login interactively to the no-ip.com web interface and update our address, the no-ip system really takes the update, and records "now" as the last updated time.
A cludgy way around the problem would be for the dyndns.class code to first change the IP to something else that is rubbish (192.168.1.1), then change it back! That would make no-ip take notice.

phil.davis

Logging into the No-IP web control panel

I logged into my no-IP free account, but I can't see where it will display the last update date. Exactly how do you get that data?
http://support.no-ip.com/customer/portal/articles/375698-why-is-my-host-not-updating-or-why-is-it-pending-deletion-
This implies that, for free accounts, when the client goes to update the IP address, if the IP address has not changed then the last update date does not get updated.
Thus, if your IP address remains the same for 30 days, you have to manually login online to no-IP and do an update.
The "fix" in that article is to buy a paid account.
When pfSense detects no change for more than [7|25] days on a no-IP account, it could purposely change the IP address to something else, then change it back.

stephenw10

Ah, I see. Expected behaviour. Seems a bit ****! ::)
I guess my line is getting more reliable then. Maybe time to switch to another dyndns provider.

It took me a while to find the cached IP date/time on the No-IP but I remembered having seen it the last time they threatened to cancel my host.

Login to the site.
Click 'Hosts/Rediercts', top left.
Click 'Manage Hosts'.
Then click the 'modify' button next to the host name.
The last update time/date is listed.

Steve

phil.davis

Thanks - found it. If I change the IP on the No-IP site to some rubbish, then 5 minutes later force an update from pfSense, the last updated time is correct. Then after another 5 minutes force an update again, the last updated time is not updated (No-IP sees that the IP is not actually changed, and does not update "last updated").
So, the workaround is, when the cache age is 25 days, for the dyndns.class code to change the IP registration to some other value (like 192.168.1.1 to avoid accidentally pointing it to someone else's valid public IP/server), then a minute later change it back to the correct IP.
This will make people's server/whatever unavailable for a few minutes - but those using the free service probably don't have 99.999% uptime contracts to meet:) It would be best to add a new Dynamic DNS provider to the list - "noipfree" - for which this behaviour happens. Those using "noip" can get the same behaviour as now, which works cleanly from the paid accounts.

cjohnson

sheesh! what a pain in the lower o-ring! i think i'm gonna' go with stephen's idea and switch to another provider.

"let's make the free service good and painful to use. that way when people get tired of it and the user base drops way down, we can justify killing it altogether because noone's using it".

::)

at any rate, thanks to everyone for the help/interest.

stan-qaz

I've had these two free ones both being updated by pfSense and they seem to be happy.

DNS-O-Matic - https://www.dnsomatic.com/

DynDNS - http://dyn.com/

phil.davis

I made some code changes that do work - https://github.com/bsdperimeter/pfsense/pull/436
But it has to be a bit of a kludge, changes the IP to 192.168.1.1 then 10 seconds later changes it back to the actual public IP. That does successfully force the "last updated" timestamp to be updated on the No-IP site. There is a little window when the name points to an invalid place. But people who are using just the free service, it will be for home or very small single-office use, so a little window like this every 25 days should be acceptable.
The code is based on 2.1 - if you are running 2.0.n then you would have to backport it a bit.

stephenw10

Pretty sure I can live with 10 seconds of downtime every 25 days. ;)
Thanks Phil.

Steve

phil.davis

The code change was committed a couple of days ago. So support for No-IP free accounts is in recent 2.1-BETA1 snapshots. You have to select "No-IP (free)" as your Dynamic DNS provider to get the special behaviour. It is working for me.

deltalord

Just for the record, another user reported the same issue.

pquesinb

This is awesome… thanks Phil! (I'm the guy who initially pointed out the annoying no-ip behavior) but hey it's free, right? Oh wait a second... pfSense is free too but there's no annoying behavior. :)

IIRC, the cron job in pfSense does these updates at 1:00am or so. If that is indeed the case then it's very unlikely to adversely impact anyone.

As for alternatives, I've found FreeDNS to be quite useful. DNS-O-Matic does look interesting and since it's an OpenDNS service, I would expect that there's almost no chance of this sort of "monkey business" cropping up in the future.

Thanks again,

Phil