Desire a subdomain to point to my home IP address

August 30, 2014 6.1k views
henrygmcdonald
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henrygmcdonald

I have a Wordpress site hosted on a DigitalOcean droplet. At home, I have a RaspberryPi which is running a web server. I am currently using no-ip's service to manage a dynamic DNS address. I'd like to stop using no-ip and just have a subdomain point to my RPi's web server.

I think what I need to do is have my RaspberryPi update an A record periodically, perhaps by using ddclient. Is there a way to do that?

For what its worth, a Raspberry Pi is just a low cost linux box, so it may be more prudent to as how to auto-update an A record with linux instead of how to do with with an RPi.

2 comments
  • sierracircle August 31, 2014

    You could possibly use FreeDns as your DNS. They have a few clients for updating dynamic IP's: http://freedns.afraid.org/scripts/freedns.clients.php

    Scroll down to the Unix clients. That looks promising.

    I have never used the Unix client, but have used their DD-WRT client successfully. I use them for my home web-server, and also donate a few domains to their domain-pool.

  • henrygmcdonald August 31, 2014

    Are you suggesting that I move the DNS away from DigitalOcean? Since I am using DigitalOcean as my main web host, I am under the impression that I must keep it with DigitalOcean.

    Right now, mydomain.com will pull up my website on DigitalOcean. I want rpi.mydomain.com to pull up the website hosted on my Raspberry Pi. I can currently get to my Raspberry Pi's website by going to rpi.no-ip.com (no-ip is a free dynamic DNS provider).

    If I understand correctly, freedns will leave me in the situation I am already in. However, I do appreciate your response. Thank you.

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2 Answers
henrygmcdonald August 31, 2014
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sierracircle August 31, 2014

Your DNS can be anywhere you want it to be. For example, on one of my droplets I have several websites. Only one of the domains use DigitalOcean DNS. The other domains use DreamHost DNS.

On my home computer I have a couple of sites. One of the domains use FreeDNS. Another of the domains use DreamHost DNS.

The DNS server simply translates the domain into an IP address. As long as your DNS records have the correct IP address set, then when someone types in your domain, they will be sent to the correct IP address. You can use whatever DNS you want to do that.

At your house, you (usually) do not have a static IP, so you have to use some sort of tool that will update your current IP with the DNS server.
FreeDNS has some tools available that let you update you DNS settings with whatever your current IP address is.
If you use FreeDNS as your DNS server, then you can run that tool on your little raspberry as a cron, and it will tell FreeDNS anytime your IP changes...

Also, if you use FreeDNS you can set an A-record for the main domain to point to your Droplet, and another A-record to point the sub-domain to your raspberry pie.

I am sorry about the lengthy post.

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