CloudflareDDNS

Update your CloudFlare DNS records with your current (dynamic) IP address via systemd timers and a bash script.

NOTE: You can rename cfddns.sh to anything you want, the script will auto-update itself. However, you MUST update the systemd service file (cfddns.service) ExecStart line manually as explained below.

Contents

• CloudflareDDNS
  • Contents
  • cfddns.sh
    • Installation:
    • Usage:
  • cfddns.service
    • IP4 and/or IP6
    • Examples
  • cfddns.timer
    • Activation
  • The log file
  • Final thoughts

cfddns.sh

Installation:

I recommend putting this script in your /usr/local/bin directory or somewhere else in your path so it's easy to run.

1. Copy the script file to your desired path and rename if you want.

   sudo cp cfddns.sh /usr/local/bin/   # just copy it
   sudo cp cfddns.sh /usr/local/bin/myscript.sh   # copy and rename
   

2. Make it executable:

   sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cfddns.sh
   

Usage:

If you run the script with no parameters, it will display the help screen. The script accepts several parameters with 2 being required. The parameters are summarized here. You can access the help screen and example usage screens by running:

cfddns.sh -h   # display help screen
cfddns.sh -x   # show script usage examples

-f: full path and filename containing account details (REQUIRED) This is the full path to a plain-text file containing your CloudFlare account details. This file must contain 3 lines in the following order:

• authorized email address This is an email address that is permitted to login to your CloudFlare account.
• global api-key You can get your Global API-key by going to your CloudFlare dashboard, clicking on your profile picture in the upper-right and opening your profile. Scroll down to to the API Keys section. Click on the 'View' button next to Global API Key.
• zone identifier You should be able to find this on the Overview page of your CloudFlare dashboard.

Your completed file should look like (these are not real credentials):

johndoe@example.com
e7882db52804aca6fab22780e055b97056466
492af8aa69f8c44baf043342c74319fd

Your global API-key is equivalent to your account password, so you should secure this file by changing the owner of the file to root

chown root:root path/to/filename

and then restricting access to only the root user

chmod 600 path/to/filename

-r: target DNS entry to update (REQUIRED) At least one entry here is required. This is the A or AAAA record you want to update the IP address for in your DNS zone file. If you have multiple A or AAAA records you want to update, simply specifiy multiple -r parameters.

Note: You can only specify either A records or AAAA records. You have to update IP4 and IP6 records separately by running this script multiple times (once for A records, once for AAAA records even if the hostname is the same).

-4 or -6: type of record to update The default option is -4 and it does not need to be specified. This will update A records specified by the -r parameter(s). If you specify -6, then AAAA records will updated as specified by the -r parameter(s).

-i: use the specified IP address The script will auto-detect the IP address of the machine it's being run on by accessing an external service and asking for that service to echo the machine's IP address. If running with -4, then the IP4 will be requested for echo. If running with -6, then the IP6 address will be requested for echo.

This parameter let's you bypass auto-detection and specify a particular address to be used instead. This parameter is most useful if running the script manually to update a particular DNS record. In most cases, you'd want your current IP address auto-detected (i.e. omit this parameter).

NOTE: The address you supply is NOT checked for correctness. Ensure you're supplying a valid address of the correct type based on your choice of -4 or -6 parameter!

-l (lower-case L): specify where the log file should be written The script will default to writing it's log file in the same directory as the script is located. It will use it's own name and append a .log extension. So, the default name for the log file is cfddns.log. If you rename the script something.sh then the generated log file name will be something.log.

This can be messy if you store the script in /usr/local/bin/ as recommended. Therefore, it's recommended you choose a different location for the log file (/var/log/cfddns.log is recommended).

[Service]
...
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cfddns.sh -l /var/log/cfddns.log ...

-h: display help Displays the help screen, which is an abbreviated version of this section you are currently reading.

-x: display examples This is the best way to learn how this script works. Several examples are provided

cfddns.service

This file must be copied to your /etc/systemd/system directory (or equivalent directory if you're not running debian/ubuntu). If you change the name of the cfddns.sh file, you must update the filename in the ExecStart line as shown below:

...
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/full/path/to/your/renamed.file -parameter1 -parameter2 -parameter...
...

IP4 and/or IP6

The cfddns.service file includes two ExecStart lines, one without a specified IP-protocol parameter (default IP4) and the other with the -6 (IP6) parameter. The service will run the cfddns.sh script in default (IP4) mode with specified parameters first and then will run the script again in IP6 mode with specified parameters.

Note: The parameters can be different in each case.

Examples

1. Only update A records Update mail.example.com A record with the current IP of this machine and log results to /var/log/cfddns.log.

   [Service]
   Type=oneshot
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cfddns.sh -f /root/accountDetails.cloudflare -r mail.example.com -l /var/log/cfddns.log
   ...
   

2. Only update AAAA records Update git.example.com and mail.example.com AAAA records with the current IP6 address of this machine. Log will be stored in the same directory as the script file (/usr/local/bin).

   [Service]
   Type=oneshot
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cfddns.sh -6 -f /home/johndoe/account.details -r git.example.com -r mail.example.com
   ...
   

3. Update A records then AAAA records Update mail.example.com A record with current IP address of this machine and write to log file stored at /var/log/DDNS_IP4.log. Then, update both mail.example.com and git.example.com AAAA records with current IP address of this machine and write to log file at /var/log/DDNS_IP6.log.

   [Service]
   Type=oneshot
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cfddns.sh -f /dir1/account.cf -r mail.example.com -l /var/log/DDNS_IP4.log
   ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/cfddns.sh -6 -f /dir2/cloudflare.details -r mail.example.com -r git.example.com -l /var/log/DDNS_IP6.log
   ...
   

cfddns.timer

This is the timer file that tells your system how often to call the cfddns.service file which runs the cfddns.sh script. By default, the timer is set for 5 minutes after the system boots up (to allow for other processes to initialize even on slower systems like a RasPi) and is then run every 15 minutes thereafter. Remember when setting your timer that CloudFlare limits API calls to 1200 every 5 minutes.

You can change the timer by modifying the relevant section of the cfddns.timer file:

[Timer]
OnBootSec=5min
OnUnitActiveSec=15min

OnBootSec is how long to wait after the system boots up before executing the cfddns.service. OnUnitActiveSec will then wait the specified time from that first (after boot) call or after the timer is explicitly started before calling cfddns.service again. I recommend setting OnUnitActiveSec to a low value (like 2 minutes) for testing then setting it to a more reasonable time (like 15 minutes) after everything is working.

Activation

You can start the timer system immediately via systemctl

systemctl start cfddns.timer

and can enable it to start automatically on system start up by typing

systemctl enable cfddns.timer

You can check the status of the timer via systemctl also

systemctl status cfddns.timer

It is NOT necessary to enable/start the cfddns.service, only the timer needs to be active.

The log file

The script logs every major action it takes and provides details on any errors it encounters in the log file (see the above section for details on log file location and name). If errors are encountered, they are colour coded red and an explanation of the error code is provided.

While the log file is as terse as I felt reasonable, you may still want to configure any log-watch programs to further filter things for you so you don't have to review this log as part of your daily routine. To make that easier, the following conventions are observed in the log file and can be used to program your log-watch system:

• Errors always appear as -- [ERROR] text and error code here --
• Errors are followed by an explanation of the specific error code on a new line
• A clean exit appears as -- [SUCCESS] some text here --
• The script always starts a new set of log entries with -- Start CloudFlare DDNS script execution --
• All log file entries start with a time-stamp in [square brackets]

If you are using the Logwatch package to monitor your system, see the README in the /etc/logwatch folder for details about the pre-configured service files already done for you :-)

Final thoughts

I'm by no means an expert in BASH scripting and I only program/script as a hobby when I find stuff that irritates me and no other good solutions seem easily available. So, by all means, please comment, provide feedback and suggestions to make this script better! Thanks, I hope this helps someone else out!

Please check out my blog at https://mytechiethoughts.com where I tackle problems like this all the time and find free/cheap solutions to tech problems.