DNS Made Easy DynDNS setup

[matthewdeets]

Hello!

Hoping someone here has tried this and/or is using DNS Made Easy dyndns with pfSense 2.3.2.

Any suggestions that you can send my way would be very appreciated as I have been unable to find instructions on configuring this dd in the pfSense docs or at DNS Made Easy knowledge base.

I'm able to select DNS Made Easy  from the list of dynamic DNS providers, but have been unable to make it update with my current is IP- always get the error "host name does not exist on system" -  thinking that I'm just not filling out the fields correctly.

Thanks!

[johnpoz]

Ok here you go, I have a dnsmadeeasy account so I just tested this.  So go in and create your A record..  Click the dynamic checkbox.  Put in your current IP or any IP so you know it changed.  Once you create it it will create the id, just edit the record to see it.

So I put in the public IP of my proxy using currently, and you can see when I do a query to it it comes back with that entry.  Notice once you create the A record it will create the record ID, see that 38…11 number of mine.  I then put in a password on that record.

Then set it up on pfsense using the dns ID that 38..11 as the record and the username, put in the password for mine test123 as you see.

then you can save and force update and there you go, when I do another query for that test pfsense.domain I created it comes back with my actual pfsense address 24.13.x.x for the previous one that was in there.

Hope that helps

[matthewdeets]

Thank you so much for your reply and assistance.  Your solution works great and I am now able to set up a dynamically updated A record with no problems.  As I suspected, I was not entering the proper information into the correct fields in pfSense.

[johnpoz]

glad could be of help.  Have to look if there is a wiki about all the different services and different details on how to make each one work, etc

[jeffc]

Hi! I'm having an identical problem to the original poster, but I don't understand the solution.

(This is, literally, my first posting here - please be gentle.)  I checked the Wiki and didn't see anything about setting up DNS Made Easy - it just mentioned it was supported.

The answer from johnpoz said:

Then set it up on pfsense using the dns ID that 38..11 as the record and the username, put in the password for mine test123 as you see.

I've read this a bunch of times and I just don't understand - I'm sorry.

On DNS Made Easy, I have an A record with a hostname, the Dynamic DNS ID, and the Dynamic DNS Password.

In pfSense (latest version), I have: Hostname (I presume this is my hostname), username, and password.

johnpoz said use the DNS ID (38..11) "as the record", and I don't understand that. I tried that as the hostname (and username), and that didn't work. I get "Record does not exist in the systme. Unable to update record".

If you kind folks can tell me EXACTLY what to put in pfSense, that would be awesome, thanks so much!

[matthewdeets]

I understand that this can be confusing with dndmadeeasy.  What I discovered is, as mentioned above, you do have to use the API call to update the dynamic DNS with dnsmadeeasy in pfSense … This is different than their regular dynamic DNS updater.  Here’s the thing, in order to use dnsnadeeasy API update, you have to have at least their “Business” account.  Their “small business“ type of account does not have their API options available. As soon as you upgrade, you can view the API settings under your account options via the dnsnadeeasy portal.  This is what confused me in the beginning as I could not find this option with my “small business“ account.  Hope this helps! -Matt

[johnpoz]

You don't understand my screenshot showing you what the DNS ID is??  Not sure how else I could explain - post a screenshot of your record you created on dns made easy.

What account do you have on dnsmadeeasy?

See attached - I am using small business account, and when I add a domain, and then go to create a record it and say its dynamic it will give you the DNS ID once you create the record..

[jeffc]

Hi Matthew,

That explains it! I don't have a business account, I have a small business account. And indeed, with a small business account, the API isn't available (the pricing clearly shows that).

I'm hesitant to update to a business account, as I just don't need to double the cost for a single dynamic address. I did note that pfSense now supports Hover, which is interesting. Hover is my domain registrar, and I moved DNS to DNS Made Easy solely because of a DHCP address on the WAN. If Hover is now supported directly, then I can completely eliminate DNS Made Easy from my network topology. I'll look at that before looking at upgrading to a business account on DNS Made Easy.

Thanks so much for your help and explanation here - I really appreciate it!

@johnpoz, I did understand what a DNS ID is. I didn't understand what you meant by "record" in the pfSense screens, as no field in pfSense (for DNS Made Easy) is marked as "record".

/Jeff

[johnpoz]

I have small business account as you can see.. You do not need anything more than that.

I showed you the screen in pfsense - what version are you running of pfsense?

Record = Hostname..

I posted a screenshot showing where you put the ID.. Not sure how it could not be any more clear..  Where you NOT seeing the attachments in my post?

[jeffc]

Hi John,

This is very odd. When I did what you said, I get an error. My version of pfSense is: 2.3.4-RELEASE-p1 (amd64).

I've attached pfSense configuration (I mangled my DNS ID for security purposes). When the update occurs, it fails:

Aug 29 08:33:48 php-fpm 55302 /services_dyndns_edit.php: Dynamic DNS: updatedns() starting
Aug 29 08:33:48 php-fpm 55302 /services_dyndns_edit.php: Dynamic DNS dnsmadeeasy (15…57): 50.35.71.245 extracted from local system.
Aug 29 08:33:48 php-fpm 55302 /services_dyndns_edit.php: Dynamic DNS (15025057): running get_failover_interface for wan. found igb0
Aug 29 08:33:48 php-fpm 55302 /services_dyndns_edit.php: Dynamic DNS dnsmadeeasy (15...57): _update() starting.
Aug 29 08:33:48 php-fpm 55302 /services_dyndns_edit.php: Dynamic DNS dnsmadeeasy (15...57): _checkStatus() starting.
Aug 29 08:33:48 php-fpm 55302 /services_dyndns_edit.php: phpDynDNS (15...57): (Error) Invalid username or password

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks so much.

/Jeff


[johnpoz]

You didn't really put … in there did you?

I would check your password, from the log looks like you didn't put in the correct password.

here I just did this again.. Took all of a 1 minute to setup. See Attached.

[jeffc]

Yes, I used the actual DNS ID.

I think the problem is that I used special characters in my password (it was a generated password), and that the protocol has problems with certain special characters. DNS Made Easy has a limit of 15 bytes for the password, so I generated a new password that was limited to alphanumeric characters, and that seemed to work fine.

Thus, I'm now all set. Thanks for your help! And just to verify, I have a small business account, and DNS Made Easy works fine with that.

/Jeff

[johnpoz]

Glad to here.. kjnew is was something stupid ;) I didn't notice any mention of any restrictions on the password on dnsmadeeasy site.. I will have to relook, if they do not mention it they should.. Might have to drop them a line.. Might really nice added feature for pfsense to mention the restrictions when you enter the password on the dyn form on pfsense.  But sure they are way busier with than for something some minor as that.

But good catch..

edit:  Ok something not right.. I did get a warning when I made the pass over 15 characters on their site.  But I couldn't find any restrictions on specials.  So I tried using pass!@#$

This gave me this error
Aug 29 12:33:42 php-fpm 73746 /services_dyndns_edit.php: phpDynDNS (56340608): (Error) Record does not exist in the system. Unable to update record

But then I just changed pass to newpass and worked just fine..

So not 100% sure if something on their end or the way pfsense is sending the info?

[jeffc]

There's definitely problems with "complex" passwords. But as long as that's known (and documented), people can work around it.

Thanks again for all your help. It would have taken a bunch of research to try and find some other provider and then switch over to it, taking care to retain all my current services.

/Jeff

[johnpoz]

I just updated the wiki with a note under dns made easy to reflect the complex password thing
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Dynamic_DNS#DNS_Made_Easy

[jeffc]

I don't believe the complex password issue is not specific to DNS Made Easy.

In working with OpenDNS, I also ran into a complex password problem. I couldn't get OpenDNS to work properly with authentication for Dynamic DNS support, so I generated an alpha-numeric password and added a "." character (OpenDNS requires one or more "special characters"). Then it worked fine.

I suspect that the protocol requires some special characters to be quoted, and they're not. But that's just a guess without looking at the code.

I just wanted to point out that the complex password problem is not isolated to DNS Made Easy, it appears to be generic (or at least it extends to OpenDNS as well).

Thanks for your help, it's awesome that you could work with me to make everything work!

For DNS Made Easy users, the key points to take away:

1. Use a "simple" password (alphanumeric), using the 15-byte maximum (for DNS Made Easy) to make things as secure as possible,
2. You do not need a "business" account on DNS Made Easy; any account at all works fine,
3. Enter the DNS ID for both the hostname and the username in the pfSense software.

With those three things, getting DynDNS updates to DNS Made Easy was a snap.

[johnpoz]

I will add those to the wiki notes..