No-IP is a Free Dynamic DNS and Managed DNS Provider, that we can use to get a free domain name. There a lot of free Dynamic DNS services, you can find a good comprehensive of them here that we can choose from, but this was the first service that I personally tried.

The good with this service is that we have a big selection of free domain names that we can choose, so we can easily find a domain that is available for the hostname we want to have.

The negative is that every 30 days they send a notification email, and we have to sign in to www.noip.com and confirm that we still use the hostname. After some time that I have used the service, I can say that it becomes annoying to verify it once every month.

Install & Configure noip2

Login as root

sudo su
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Type the following commands:

cd /usr/local/src/
wget http://www.noip.com/client/linux/noip-duc-linux.tar.gz
tar xf noip-duc-linux.tar.gz
cd noip-2.1.9-1/
make install
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On the configuration stage:

  • Add email and password.
  • The hostname to update (choose only one).

To launch the client

/usr/local/bin/noip2
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NOTE: You have to stop it to make it a service later.

Add an executable (noip2) as a service

Create noip2.service in /etc/systemd/system

And add the following:

[Unit]
Description=No-Ip Dynamic DNS Update Service
After=network.service

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/noip2

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
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Restart systemctl to accept changes

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
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Enable service

sudo systemctl enable noip2
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Start service

sudo systemctl start noip2
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Restart service

With a restart, it updates the public IP:

sudo systemctl restart noip2
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See logs

sudo journalctl -u noip2
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