So yes, this is stupid simple and I’ve put it off far to long–world renown for my sloth–but here’s the quick lowdown for ddclient.
- Grab and install either from Synaptic or apt-get.
- Walk through the little install wizard then do it all over again: dpkg-reconfigure ddclient. You want to make sure it runs as a service and monitors changes in ppp–something that the install wizard doesn’t cover.
- Then tweak /etc/ddclient.conf:
# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
protocol=easydns
use=web
server=members.easydns.com
login=yournamehere
password=’password’
*.your.domain - Restart the service: sudo /etc/init.d/ddclient reload
One of the things I noticed when fiddling with ddclient was that it doesn’t work so well with wireless cards. Sounds stupid, but I was testing in on my laptop and never got very far because it wouldn’t update the IP address so my sloth settled in and I never took the initiative to test it on a box with a wired connection.
Tags: ddclient, DNS, Linux, Networking, Ubuntu

Thanks, this was very helpful. I think I have it running now. The config file for dyndns was a little different but hopefully now I can forget about it!
Hey, thanks for reminding me to get off my ass and get another service cut over from Windows!
Now to get Media Center 11 running…