A friendly little python app for a DIY inspired DynDNS client, leveraging AWS Route53

I'm not presently publishing this on Pypi - so you'll need to fetch and install it as if it were a development release (which it is).

git clone https://github.com/chuckbutler/autodns.git
cd autodns
python setup.py install

This will fetch all of the required dependencies and place autodns in your /usr/local/bin path.

It may be saner/cleaner to use a virtualenv. This is documented all over the web so I'll let you use your google skills to determine how/if you want to do this.

AutoDNS works on a few basic principals:

• Each domain is their own configuration file
• We wont be editing APEX records, only A records
• You have internet connectivity
• You want DNS updated on a regular schedule
• You have exported your AWS Access Credentials to your environment

To get familiar with all of AutoDNS's commands, simply pass it a -h flag.

autodns -h

Update DNS entries on rt53 quickly and easily.

positional arguments:
  config             Specify configuration file to parse

  optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  -l LOG, --log LOG  log to PATH
  -v, --debug        display debug output

Autodns uses configuration files (one per parent-level domain, or ZONEID) to not only configure, but also to cache the last IP it sent to the server - it adds this field automatically, so dont worry about adding that to begin with. The configuration has a few levels of keys in YAML format and will look like the following:

ZONEID: P23QZY95VZHATG
DOMAINS:
  - pad.autodns.net
  - minecraft.autodns.net
TTL: 300

Note: Ensure you use a FQDN in the DOMAINS array - as this is how we tell AWS Rt53 what we are adding / modifying. Without a FQDN the request will fail and you'll be left to dig through the logs to see what went wrong.

The required keys are:

• ZONEID
• DOMAINS
• TTL

Notice that they are all CAPS, and this is by design. Where possible, meaningful error messages were attempted to be raised. If you encounter any bugs - simply submit them to the issue tracker.

The ADDRESS key will be parsed out of the YAML and is the determinent if an update needs to take place. If you are adding a dns entry to the configuration - you will want to completely remove the ADDRESS key, so it is forced to push a fresh update. This will send a request to all of the subdomains in the configuration, and once completed - will resume normal operation.

Glad you asked! This is exactly why I built AutoDNS. To get AutoDNS to run on a schedule you will need to place it in your users crontab:

crontab -e

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=XXXXX
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=XXXXX
* */1 * * * autodns path/to/config.yml -l $HOME/autodns.log

This will run AutoDNS every hour, and log the output to $HOME/autodns.log - effectively replacing any legacy DynDNS client functionality you may have had on your router. Note that this only gets run while the machine running AutoDNS is on.

Log into your AWS Rt53 control panel, and it will be listed by your Domain Name