OpenDNS DDNS

mbrossar

Are there any tricks to configuring the Dynamic DNS service for OpenDNS? I have an OpenDNS account for DNS filtering. I've set the advanced setting in OpenDNS to allow Dynamic IP Update. I've configured the pfSense Dynamic DNS service as follows:

Service Type: OpenDNS
Interface to monitor: WAN
Hostname: Name of the network as it's defined in OpenDNS. This is just a name, not a FQDN.
MX:
Wildcards is unchecked
Verbose logging is unchecked
Username & Password are the credentials I use to log in to the OpenDNS web site.
Description: OpenDNS
This results in the client being listed with a Cached IP of 0.0.0.0 in red. On a related note, I have another client defined for Namecheap. The Cashed IP reports correctly and is green. This makes me think the OpenDNS client is not successfully registering with OpenDNS, but I don't know why.

Gertjan

Hi,

This option is harmless :

@mbrossar said in OpenDNS DDNS:

Verbose logging is unchecked

but could inform you about how it works - or what happens when it doesn't. Yet, you don't want to know ;)

Btw, I have an OpenDNS account, and "Dynamic DNS" set up as per OpenDNS instructions.
My "Username & Password are the credentials I use to log in to the OpenDNS web site." are the credentials I use to login here https://www.opendns.com/.

The Services => Dynamic DNS => Check IP Services url mentioned over there works for you ?
And, it works for pfSEnse ? Enter console, option 8 and type

curl http://checkip.dyndns.org

tim.mcmanus

OpenDNS isn't DDNS, or Dynamic Domain Name Services.

To use OpenDNS, change the DNS servers in pfSense either in the system settings or your DHCP server settings.

DDNS is for assigning your home (or work) at DNS entry that updates when your ISP changes your dynamic IP address.

Gertjan

@tim-mcmanus said in OpenDNS DDNS:

OpenDNS isn't DDNS, or Dynamic Domain Name Services.

OpenDNS uses a DDNS facility so it knows that DNS requests coming from your IP are handled using your DNS filter rules.
We, as OpenDNS users are identified by our (WAN) IP. That IP can change over time, so the DDNS is used to let OpenDNS know what IP we have.

tim.mcmanus

@gertjan Ah. I only remember it using an agent on a computer. Haven’t used the service in years. And apparent that shows. :)

stan-qaz

@mbrossar I use their DNSomatic service to keep OpenDNS in sync with the IP my ISP assigns me.

https://www.dnsomatic.com

Use all.dnsomatic.com as the hostname when configuring pfSense.

mbrossar

Solution's a little unexpected and odd, but here it is...

I am using a password vault and my OpenDNS password was randomly generated with no restrictions. This caused no problems logging into the site manually, but it prevented the DDNS client from authenticating and updating my IP address. I changed my password such that it did not include ambiguous characters and it now works.

Gertjan

So this was the error :
@mbrossar said in OpenDNS DDNS:

Verbose logging is unchecked

With verbose logging you would have seen that the password wasn't good

lordmundi

Just want to add to this in case someone else runs into it. There is in fact some sort of issue with passwords that have special symbols which work just fine in OpenDNS (and special symbols are required), but in pfsense, the login doesn't work. For example, changing my password to not include an "&" but to instead use a "$" fixed my issue. I'm guessing there is some bug in how the password is being encoded from the html form field or something.

As others have mentioned, checking the verbose logging flag is encourage so you can go into the system logs after you force an update and see if it logged in successfully or not. Hope that helps someone!