ddclient for DynDns on RN300 - Working

It took me a while to get ddclient to work on my ReadyNAS RN300 series, but eventually, redstamp user provided the key hint I needed.

Note: I will be publishing this same post with more details at https://www.yuenx.com.

Here's how I got it to work.

1. Enabled SSH for "admin" user (Enabling will ask you to enter your Current Password to verify)
2. SSH in as "root" with same password as "admin"
3. "sudo" is not needed when logged in as root
4. If you do not log in as root (ie. you logged in as "admin" or any other admin account), trying to start ddclient resulted in error:

[....] Starting ddclient (via systemctl): ddclient.serviceFailed to start ddclient.service: The name org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1 was not provided by any .service files
See system logs and 'systemctl status ddclient.service' for details.
failed!

Instructions asked to create a new file at /data/ddclient/ddclient.conf, but that never worked for me. Instead, error logs showed that /etc/ddclient.conf was in use. Output from systemctl status ddclient.service:

Feb 18 15:41:41 READYNAS_HOST systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Update dynamic domain name service entries...
Feb 18 15:41:41 READYNAS_HOST ddclient[13244]: WARNING: file /etc/ddclient.conf, line 9: Invalid Value for keyword 'login' = ''
Feb 18 15:41:41 READYNAS_HOST systemd[1]: Started LSB: Update dynamic domain name service entries.

Edit /etc/ddclient.conf using "vi":

# /etc/ddclient.conf
# Author: https://www.yuenx.com
# Reference: https://help.dyn.com/ddclient
# Reference: https://sourceforge.net/p/ddclient/git/ci/60fe051b7a504573386e2df2ffa8703dd47a8cb9/tree/sample-etc_ddclient.conf
# Reference: https://www.bleddynrichards.co.uk/posts/installing-ddns-provider-on-readynas
# Basic configuration file for ddclient
#
daemon=600
# You SHOULD use SSL to securely send your credentials over to DynDNS to log in with!
ssl=yes
mail=my_readynas_user_with_email_address
# mail all msgs to my_readynas_user_with_email_address
mail-failure=my_readynas_user_with_email_address
# mail failed update msgs to my_readynas_user_with_email_address
use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.com, web-skip='IP Address'
protocol=dyndns2
server=members.dyndns.org,
login=my_dyndns_username
password=my_dyndns_password
my_host.dyndns.info,

• Replace "my_readynas_user_with_email_address" with the user you want emails to be sent to. Remove the "mail" and "mail-failure" lines if you do not want notifications.
• Replace "my_dyndns_username" and "my_dyndns_password" with your login credentials
• Replace "my_host.dyndns.info" with the DynDNS address given to you
• If you use No-IP and other services, look for the sample configurations at https://sourceforge.net/p/ddclient/git/ci/60fe051b7a504573386e2df2ffa8703dd47a8cb9/tree/sample-etc_ddclient.conf

Next, I started the ddclient service to see if any errors popped up:

/etc/init.d/ddclient start -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet

Use this to look for any errors: systemctl status ddclient.service

Use this to stop the service: /etc/init.d/ddclient stop -daemon=0 -debug -verbose -noquiet

For a while, I could not find any meaningful error messages that told me what was going on. Then I checked the mailbox associated with my "my_readynas_user_with_email_address" user and saw a message about libio-socket-ssl-perl needing to be installed. To install, I ran:
apt-get update -y
apt-get install -y libio-socket-ssl-perl

Started the ddclient app from ReadyNAS WebUI. From SSH, I checked for any errors again:

systemctl status ddclient.service

ddclient.service - LSB: Update dynamic domain name service entries
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/ddclient; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2022-02-18 15:41:41 PST; 32min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 12088 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/ddclient stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 13244 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/ddclient start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/ddclient.service
           └─13253 ddclient - sleeping for 70 second

Note: If you still see errors with the above output, check the timestamp. It may be the LAST error that was recorded.

"Sleeping for 70 second" is when it will run again.

Once successfully updated, email was received that stated:
SUCCESS: updating my_host.dyndns.info: good: IP address set to 100.100.1.100
regards,
ddclient@READYNAS_HOST (version 3.8.2)

Important: Disabled SSH for "admin" user (Disabling will ask you to enter your Current Password to verify). This it to prevent anybody from the internet to SSH into your NAS and cause havoc.