PiVPN, Static/Dynamic Server Names, and CloudFlare DNS – Part 4

As I build more and more Pi-based systems, I find the need to add management scripts for accessing SSH, OpenVPN, and all kinds of other tools. This leads me to version 4 of the CloudFlare Dynamic DNS AutoIP updater script. It’s now hosted on GitHub.

Pulling off of GitHub:

Cloudflare-Subdomain-AutoIP-Updater

Create a private Dynamic DNS using the CloudFlare API with this script.

If you have a domain registered at CloudFlare, you can use this script to update the IP of the subdomain with a specific computer. The computer will get its IP address and send the information to CloudFlare using the API.

This script creates 3 files:

  1. an initializing script that creates and runs everything: cf_ip_script_creator.sh
  2. a script that gets all the CF details from you: cf_ip_updater_creator.sh
  3. a script that updates the subdomain IP address: cf_ip_updater.sh

Put the 3rd script (cf_ip_updater.sh) into a cron job to run every 5 or 15 minutes or so so that you can use access your system anywhere.

  sudo crontab -e
  
  */10 * * * *  nice -n 16 /home/scripts/cf_ip_updater.sh

Potential uses:

  • log into your computer anytime with SSH
  • run a portable OpenVPN server
  • keep your blog server private by using CloudFlare caching
  • whatever you can think of

Some potential issues:

  • if you fail to successfully run the script, the cat commands that append text to existing commands will force you to delete the create scripts (cf_ip_updater.sh, cf_ip_updater_creator.sh) before you run the initializing script (cf_ip_script_creator.sh) again.

You need the following information:

  • FULLDOMAIN cloudflare.com (your registered domain name)
  • SUBDOMAIN web.cloudflare.com (your subdomain linked to your system’s IP address)
  • EMAIL [email protected] (your account name)
  • KEY 9a7806061c88ada191ed06f989cc3dac (your CloudFlare API key details)
  • FILEPATH /home/path (where you want the script to be)

How to run:

  wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tgmgroup/Cloudflare-Subdomain-AutoIP-Updater/master/cf_ip_script_creator.sh
  chmod +X cf_ip_script_creator.sh
  sudo bash cf_ip_script_creator.sh

Dependencies:

  • The jq command requires the jq package (sudo apt install jq)
  • The dig command requires dnsutils (Debian) or bind-utils (Cent-OS) (sudo apt install dnsutils)

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