Joey's Dynip Guide
Created on October 1st, 1999.
Last updated on December 27th, 1999.

This guide is in no way approved by the staff at DynIP, but just a guide on how I set up my dynip domain and the software for Linux.

First of all you must be wondering what DynIP is all about. They are a Canadian company that specializes in name forwarding to dynamic and static IP Addresses. So what does that mean? Well as you know, if you have a regular dial-up connection to the internet like most people do, everytime you connect to the internet, your IP address changes. Now this can be a pain if you want to run a web server, mail server or ftp server etc. When you subscribe to the dynip basic service, (30 day free trial!) they give you yourname.dynip.com and a program which you can have automatically ran when you connect to the internet, and it will update the dynip database with your current IP address.

So then if someone wanted to connect to your server, they would just go to http://yourname.dynip.com and if you're online, they will connect, instead of having to go through the trouble of finding out your current IP address and such.

So first off, you will want to go to http://www.dynip.com and sign up for their 30 day 100% free trial. Once that is done, you will have to download their software package. It is available for Windows 3.x/95/98/NT, MacOS and UNIX/Linux, but we will only cover the install with the Linux client due to the nature of our site. If you wish to find out more information on how to install the other flavors of the client, please visit www.dynip.com.

Part 1: Installing the dynip client software

So lets begin, log in as root and download the software into your home directory. Once that is done type:

tar zxvf dynip_3.00.tar.gz

That will extract the files into a directory called dynip_3.00_b1. Now you must change into that directory and type:

./Configure linux

This will configure the dynip software to run on your Linux machine. Next you must type the following command to have the software installed onto your machine:

make install

That will install the binaries (executable files) into the /usr/local/bin directory.

The final stage is to type make man to have the man pages installed onto your machine. If you wish to use the man pages, the names of the pages are dynipclient and dynipadmin. So you could just do man dynipclient from the console or from a terminal.

Part 2: Configuring the dynip client?

Now that we have successfully compiled and installed the Dynip software, we just need to configure it. This is a very simple process.

To register a dynip name you must know how to use dynipadmin tool and you must have decided on a hostname, say if you wanted the hostname king, your complete URL would be: http://king.dynip.com

Once you have decided on a hostname you must register it using the dynipadmin tool. The format is as follows:

/usr/local/bin/dynipadmin -r FIRSTNAME LASTNAME EMAIL HOSTNAME

Here is an example for a guy name Foo Bar who wants the hostname king:

/usr/local/bin/dynipadmin -r jack daniels foo@email.com king

It may take a few moments to process the information to dynip headquarters. After that you have succsefully installed and configured dynip.

Now that you have registered for dynip service you need to use the client to make your hostname (i.e king.dynip.com) point to your ip (i.e 192.168.30.1). You use the dynipclient tool to do this, just simply execute the dynipclient program:

/usr/local/bin/dynipclient

You must do this everytime you logon to the internet. You may find that tedious and yes there is a shorter way! Simple add the line:

/usr/local/bin/dynipclient

to the end of your /etc/ppp/ip-up file.

Now everytime you establish a ppp connection, the dynipclient will automatically be ran and your ip will be resolved to your dynip name.

Part 3: Testing to see if dynip is working

If you think something is fishy with your dynip setup you can use nslookup to test it. Here is an example:

nslookup king.dynip.com

Server: nomin.norlink.net
Adress: 205.50.130.11

Name: king.dynip.com
Address: 204.50.171.87

Make sure that the IP under your dynip name is your IP. You can also test this by telnetting to your dynip name and it should be your system.

Having trouble? Got questions? Require further assistance? If so please feel free to visit our Help Forums and ask the experts!