Easy Fixes: How to fix ddclient for zoneedit.com on Debian

Even though Comcast changes my IP address every once in a while, I use the outstanding dynamic DNS free services offered by zoneedit.com to keep my domain names accurately pointed to my server at home.

Recently, I had problems with my cable modem and after calling in to technical support, my IP address changed. I waited a while and tried to see my domain names on the web... but got nothin'. Even though it runs as a service, I ran ddclient manually, and got nothin'. I then remembered that ddclient is a polite program, and so I ran it again with "ddclient -verbose". This time, within the output, I got a 301 Redirect message that the server has changed from www.zoneedit.com to dynamic.zoneedit.com.

I navigated to /etc and edited my ddclient.conf file as follows:

OLD:
debian:/etc# cat ddclient.conf
# Configuration file for ddclient
generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf

pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
protocol=zoneedit1
use=web,
web=dnspark
server=www.zoneedit.com
login=xxxxxx
password='xxxxx'
www.example.com, www.example2.com

NEW:
debian:/etc# cat
ddclient.conf
# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf

pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
protocol=zoneedit1
use=web, web=dnspark
server=dynamic.zoneedit.com
login=xxxxxx
password='xxxxx'
www.example.com, www.example2.com

Running "ddclient -verbose" again now gets a successful login and update. Whoo-hoo! Victory for Todd!

Final notes: Remember that it does take time for these changes to propagate to all the nameservers out there. If you change your password at zoneedit.com, you'll need to edit /etc/ddclient.conf to reflect that password change... Fortunately, ddclient's error messages are quite good, so it was easy to work this out. Don't use a "#"character in your zoneedit.com password, ddclient doesn't like that.