Does the White Russian 0.9 DynDNS client suck just as much?

[Ben Scott]

On 6/14/07, VirginSnow at vfemail.net <VirginSnow at vfemail.net> wrote:
> The problem here seems to be that the ez-ipupdate package is
> integrated with neither the webif nor the rest of OpenWRT.

  Hmmm.  It was better than that for me.  Have you installed the X-WRT
extensions to OpenWRT?  The webif^2 subsystem is a big improvement, to
the point where I didn't use plain OpenWRT much.  With X-WRT, I was
able to find a Dynamic DNS UI area, install the package from there,
and configure it from there.  I also found initscripts and such which
were attempting to the control ez-ipupdate program.  Obviously,
something still wasn't working, but it *was* doing *something*.

> When the ez-ipupdate package is installed, it installs the config file as
> /etc/ez-ipupdate.conf.

  I just checked, and I do have an /etc/ez-ipupdate.conf file on my
home router.  But it's stale and looks completely stock.  I suspect
it's just being ignored.

> You have to create you own /etc/ez-ipupdate/ez-ipupdate.conf file ...

  Mine was already created, although I did add to it.

> Note that the settings on the DynDNS page of the webif DON"T ACTUALLY
> CONFIGURE ez-ipupdate!  Only the Enable/Disable switch on that page
> has any effect on real life events.  All the other settings (service
> type, account name, password, hostname, update interval) just hang out
> in nvram and are never actually used!

  Interesting.  I'm pretty sure mine did *something* to the config
file.  My conclusion was that it just didn't do enough.

> ez-ipupdate (though it offers a -q "quiet" switch) doesn't offer
> any kind of debugging output.

  FWIW, there is a foreground mode, but I found it still didn't give
any useful information.

> But, by default on OpenWRT, does not syslog to /var/log/messages
> (or any file under /var/log!).

  It's a flash ROM filesystem.  Flash has a limited number of write
cycles.  Writing logs to a flash filesystem will eventually result in
a dead part, sometimes rather quickly.  That's why it doesn't do that.
 I suggest using syslog's network logging feature to send the messages
to a "real" computer (with a hard disk).

> Even there, the information supplied is extremely limited!

  Yah.  ez-ipupdate does indicate in the log when it has sent a DNS
update, though.  So you can at least find out if it *thinks* it's
doing something.

> So, without access to any debugging output, I'm not even sure if what
> I've done will convince ez-ipupdate to update my DynDNS on schedule.

  Check the DynDNS web UI for your domain name.  It should indicate
the date of the last update.  I know mine does.

> I suspect that OpenWRT automagically rebooted me (without notice)
> after $arbitrary_configuration_change.  OpenWRT seems to like doing
> that.

  With X-WRT (again, I didn't stick with plain OpenWRT much), I found
that it usually didn't reboot after a config change.  But it may be
you're just changing different things than I was.  X-WRT also offered
a multi-level Save/Review/Commit/Reject system for config changes, so
you could see what it was going to do, and batch things together, so
you at least get a single reboot.

-- Ben