Re: DDNS Not Working

objecttothis2 · ‎2015-12-16

Updated to the latest 12.04 (3700 Annex A) when I noticed that DDNS wasn't working.

- I have freedns.afraid.org selected for DynDNS Service.

- For Username (or hash) I have tried blank, "guest" (which is what ddwrt uses), my freedns username and the hash.

- For Password I have tried blank and the password for freedns.

- for alias hostname I have tried the hostname and hostname, hash

I also tried messing with the advance settings but got nothing to work. Here is a problem I see. The IP address shown as the WAN1 Internet Port address is NOT the address that appears in the syslog entry (and consequently on whatsmyip.org). My WAN1 IP address responds to ping outside of the network but the whatsmyip.org address does not leading me to believe that the router is not properly assigning IP addresses. At minimum it's not using the correct IP address to report to freedns. Nonetheless it's not updating the address anyway. Unless I'm completely mistaken sites like what's my IP should report the external IP address of the router, but it appears that the router is not handling things properly.

Here are the results that I get when I apply and commit:

Stopping inadyn-mt PID:2158 2157 2155

Thu Dec 17 11:00:56 2015: W:LANG: Cannot open language file. Will use english defaults, or default override (--lang_file ...)

Thu Dec 17 11:00:56 2015: S:INADYN: Could not open default servers_additional.cfg. Will try svr_add_cfg option, if set...

Started inadyn-mt PID:2175 2174 2172 2158 2157 OK

Here is the syslog entry

Dec 17 08:18:20 [ROUTERNAME] daemon.info dhcpc[1878]: Sending discover...

Dec 17 11:18:21 [ROUTERNAME] user.warn INADYN[2266]: Thu Dec 17 11:18:21 2015: W:CACHE_LIST Address, alias pairs read from cache file (/tmp/inadyn_ip.cache):

Dec 17 11:18:21 [ROUTERNAME] user.warn INADYN[2266]: Thu Dec 17 11:18:21 2015: W:CACHE_LIST [IP Address] chiraq.chickenkiller.com:auto freedns.afraid.org...

Dec 17 11:18:21 [ROUTERNAME] user.notice INADYN[2266]: Thu Dec 17 11:18:21 2015: N:INADYN: The request for IP server: GET / HTTP/1.0^M Host: checkip.dyndns.org^M User-Agent: inadyn-mt/02.24.47 bhoover@wecs.com^M ^M

Dec 17 08:18:24 [ROUTERNAME] daemon.info dhcpc[1878]: Sending discover...

objecttothis2 · ‎2016-03-04

Here is an update. It turns out that my ISP was indeed using a NAT to issue me an external IP address, however the router was being issued and address that I could route to from outside the network. I switched ISP's when my ISP told me that I would have to pay extra for a static IP in order to get an external IP address. However another solution here would be to allow the firmware to skip the external IP address check a la DD-WRT and just use the WAN assigned IP address.

View solution in original post

ittroll · ‎2015-12-17

I also used to use freedns on the old firmware and it worked fine with the preconfigured profile. However I have since switched to namecheap and so now use the generic profile on the GENIE firmware. This does work fine.

In both cases I have found that the initial configuration does not trigger an update. The routine which detects an IP change only works effectively once everything is configured correctly. So it is best to use the forced update option when first trying to get the config right.

objecttothis2 · ‎2015-12-17

That's part of the problem. The other part is that the IP address that the firmware is reporting when running the IP address check is not correct. It should be using the WAN1 IP address but it isn't. Even if I could get it to update it wouldn't do me any good.

richud · ‎2015-12-17

For what its worth I am using no-ip ok.

I think the [IP Address] bit is worked out from querying google (suggest reading inadyn docs for more details) and if that isn't returning your actual IP there is a problem with something your ISP is doing, (perhaps a transparent proxy).

objecttothis2 · ‎2015-12-21

@richud I'm guessing that it's not a transparent proxy because it was working on your firmware prior to upgrading to the Genie version of your firmware. I spent some time looking at the inadyn documentation but even if I am able to get the settings correct if the firmware reports the WAN1 address as different from the google reported address it's not going to work. From an IP address perspective the ISP should not even be aware of the connected devices on the router. If the ISP is assigning more than one IP address it's because it can see the connected device which it should not be able to do. Can you look into it and at least see if you can replecate the issue? At least one other person said that they couldn't get freedns to work.

richud · ‎2015-12-21

@objecttothis2 your WAN1 address is the (probably) dhcp assigned address from your ISP. (Devices you have connected to your router are nothing to do with anything.) I just signed up to afraid to see what is going on.

You only set two things -

1) 'dyndns service' to freedns.afraid.org

2) 'alias hostname' to your hostname a comma and the hash with no spaces.

blahblah.uk.to,HUhUVElTSlhXS3BNOU5tMVl6ZWZ4SjJlOjE1NDE2NDU5

In my log I get this and the IP is correct. (I also set log level to 'notice')

Dec 21 21:21:31 (none) user.err INADYN[11799]: Mon Dec 21 21:21:31 2015: E:CACHE_LIST Failed opening cache file in ip_cache_list_read...
Dec 21 21:23:05 (none) user.warn INADYN[11799]: Mon Dec 21 21:23:05 2015: W:INADYN: IP address for alias 'blahblah.uk.to:auto' needs update to '182.26.65.165'...
Dec 21 21:23:05 (none) user.warn INADYN[11799]: Mon Dec 21 21:23:05 2015: W:INADYN: Alias 'blahblah.uk.to' to IP '182.26.65.165' updated successfully.
Dec 21 21:23:05 (none) user.warn INADYN[11799]: Mon Dec 21 21:23:05 2015: W:INADYN: DYNDNS Server response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK^M Server: nginx^M Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 21:23:01 GMT^M Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8^M Connection: close^M Vary: Accept-Encoding^M Cache-Co
Dec 21 21:24:46 (none) user.warn INADYN[11833]: Mon Dec 21 21:24:46 2015: W:CACHE_LIST Address, alias pairs read from cache file (/tmp/inadyn_ip.cache):
Dec 21 21:24:46 (none) user.warn INADYN[11833]: Mon Dec 21 21:24:46 2015: W:CACHE_LIST 182.26.65.165 blahblah.uk.to:auto freedns.afraid.org...
Dec 21 21:24:47 (none) user.notice INADYN[11833]: Mon Dec 21 21:24:47 2015: N:INADYN: The request for IP server: GET / HTTP/1.0^M Host: checkip.dyndns.org^M User-Agent: inadyn-mt/02.24.47 bhoover@wecs.com^M ^M
Dec 21 21:24:51 (none) user.notice INADYN[11833]: Mon Dec 21 21:24:51 2015: N:DYNDNS: My IP address: 182.26.65.165

and it seems all ok, then it should update every ten mins (assuming default)

Dec 21 21:34:54 (none) user.notice INADYN[11833]: Mon Dec 21 21:34:54 2015: N:INADYN: The request for IP server: GET / HTTP/1.0^M Host: checkip.dyndns.org^M User-Agent: inadyn-mt/02.24.47 bhoover@wecs.com^M ^M
Dec 21 21:35:06 (none) user.notice INADYN[11833]: Mon Dec 21 21:35:06 2015: N:DYNDNS: My IP address: 182.26.65.165

I have an almost static ip so I cant reconnect to check it changes ok but looks ok to me.

If it worked ok before (not on an ISP transparent proxy messing about with the IP) I can only assume you have got a temp block from checkip for hitting it too many times , perhaps as you were fiddling with the settings?

objecttothis2 · ‎2015-12-22

OK, I updated the settings to what you specified and this time it updated the freedns.afraid.org listing, however it updates it with the incorrect IP address. As you can see from the log below it's updating freedns with the IP address that it pulls from checkip.dyndns.org but not with the DHCP address assigned by my ISP to the router. If the ISP is seeing the connected device and assigning an IP address to it, it shouldn't be and I think that may indicate that NAT is not working properly. The fact that this stopped working after switching to the new firmware, I think, should rule out a transparent proxy. I am using the WAN-to-LAN port setting which existed in the previous firmware as well. Is it possible that something isn't configured correctly in the firmware? It does look like we resolved the issue of it not updating the DDNS and that shows that I'm not blocked for too frequently updating.

For testing you can log into freedns, manually change the IP address to confirm that your router will indeed update the address. Did you compare the WAN1 IP address with the IP address that inadyn used to update freedns? Is it possible to force inadyn to update the IP address with the DHCP address assigned to the router rather than poll something on the web?

Here is the syslog:

Dec 22 14:36:51 [ROUTERNAME] user.err INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:51 2015: E:CACHE_LIST Failed opening cache file in ip_cache_list_read...
Dec 22 14:36:52 [ROUTERNAME] user.notice INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:52 2015: N:INADYN: The request for IP server: GET / HTTP/1.0^M Host: checkip.dyndns.org^M User-Agent: inadyn-mt/02.24.47 bhoover@wecs.com^M ^M
Dec 22 14:36:53 [ROUTERNAME] user.notice INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:53 2015: N:DYNDNS: My IP address: [INCORRECT IP ADDRESS]
Dec 22 14:36:53 [ROUTERNAME] user.warn INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:53 2015: W:INADYN: IP address for alias '[DDNS ALIAS]:auto' needs update to '[INCORRECT IP ADDRESS]'...
Dec 22 11:36:54 [ROUTERNAME] daemon.info dhcpc[1879]: Sending discover...
Dec 22 14:36:54 [ROUTERNAME] user.notice INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:54 2015: N:INADYN: DYNDNS my Request: GET /dynamic/update.php?[FREEDNS HASH]&address=[INCORRECT IP ADDRESS] HTTP/1.0^M Host: freedns.afraid.org^M User-Agent: inadyn-mt/02.24.47 bhoover
Dec 22 14:36:54 [ROUTERNAME] user.warn INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:54 2015: W:INADYN: Alias '[DDNS ALIAS]' to IP '[INCORRECT IP ADDRESS]' updated successfully.
Dec 22 14:36:54 [ROUTERNAME] user.warn INADYN[16579]: Tue Dec 22 14:36:54 2015: W:INADYN: DYNDNS Server response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK^M Server: nginx^M Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2015 10:36:53 GMT^M Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8^M Connection: close^M Vary: Accept-Encoding^M Cache-Co

objecttothis2 · ‎2016-03-04

Here is an update. It turns out that my ISP was indeed using a NAT to issue me an external IP address, however the router was being issued and address that I could route to from outside the network. I switched ISP's when my ISP told me that I would have to pay extra for a static IP in order to get an external IP address. However another solution here would be to allow the firmware to skip the external IP address check a la DD-WRT and just use the WAN assigned IP address.