Domain Renewal and DynDNS for Freenom.com

Last Update

⚠ As it seems Freenom is no longer able to manage any of their ccTLDs .tk .cf .ga etc and lost their ICANN accreditation for gTLDs, this really is the end (December 2023).

⚠ Freenom recently added CAPTCHA from AWS WAF, causing this script to stop working (June 2023).

Latest version: v2023-08-03 (CHANGES.md)

Make sure to add new config options when updating script

This shell script makes sure your Freenom domains don't expire by auto renewing them. It can also set a DNS record with the clients ip address.

You'll need to have already registered an account at Freenom.com with at least one (free) domain added, before you can run the script.

Usage

freenom.com Domain Renewal and DynDNS
-------------------------------------

Usage:      freenom.sh -l [-d]
            freenom.sh -r <domain OR -a> [-s <subdomain>]
            freenom.sh -u <domain> [-s <subdomain>] [-m <ip>] [-f]
            freenom.sh -z <domain>

Options:    -l    List all domains and id's in account
                  add [-d] to show renewal Details
            -r    Renew <domain> or use '-r -a' to update All
                  add [-s] to renew <Subdomain>
            -u    Update <domain> A record with current ip
                  add [-s] to update <Subdomain> record
                  add [-m <ip>] to Manually update static <ip>
                  add [-f] to Force update on unchanged ip
            -z    Zone for <domain>, shows dns records

            -4    Use ipv4 and modify A record on "-u" (default)
            -6    Use ipv6 and modify AAAA record on "-u"
            -c    Config <file> to use, instead of freenom.conf
            -i    Ip commands list, used to get current ip
            -o    Output renewals, shows html file(s)

Examples    ./freenom.sh -r example.com
            ./freenom.sh -c /etc/mycustom.conf -r -a
            ./freenom.sh -u example.com -s mail

            * When "-u" or "-r" is used with argument <domain>
              any settings in script or config file are overridden

Installation

Using a full Linux distro including coreutils is recommended (e.g. Debian). Embedded and BusyBox based systems are untested and will probably not work correctly or at all.

Note that this shell script requires recent versions of "Bash" and "cURL"

Auto Installer

Run: make install

(from git clone directory)

This automatically installs the script, .conf file and configures scheduler.

Manual install

Suggested installation path: "/usr/local/bin/freenom.sh"

And for the config file: "/usr/local/etc/freenom.conf"

Docker

There's an image available from GitHub Container Registry which you can run like this:

docker run --rm --env freenom_email="[email protected]" --env freenom_passwd="yourpassword" ghcr.io/mkorthof/freenom_script -l

For more information see Docker.md

Configuration

Settings can be changed in the script itself or set in a separate config file (default). Every setting has comments with possible options and examples.

First edit config and set your email and password which you use to sign-in to freenom.com

• The default filename is "freenom.conf" in the same location as the script, or "/usr/local/etc/freenom.conf"
• You can also use freenom.sh -c /path/to/file.conf
• To optionally put config in the script itself instead: copy settings from conf file into freenom.sh (before "Main")

Default settings such as retries and timeouts can be changed, they are however OK to leave as-is (see Overrides.md).

Testing

Test the script by running freenom.sh -l and make sure your domains are listed. To Renew domains or Update A record, see Usage or freenom.sh -h

Scheduling

Optionally you can schedule the script to run automatically. The installer creates "/etc/cron.d/freenom" or systemd timers in 'system mode' so the script runs at certain intervals. It will output a message with instructions on how to set your domain(s) to renew/update or renew all:

• Cron:
  • edit the created file in /etc/cron.d and uncomment line(s)
• Systemd:
  • systemctl enable --now freenom-renew-all.timer
  • systemctl enable --now [email protected]
  • systemctl enable --now [email protected]

If systemd is not available on your system, the installer will use cron instead.

Manual setup

See Scheduling.md

Notifications

Email

To enable email alerts, make sure MTA is set; the default is /usr/sbin/sendmail. Emails will be sent on renewal or update errors. If you do not have/want an MTA installed you could use bashmail instead.

If you want to receive the alerts on a different email address than freenom_email set RCPTTO. You can also set an optional "From" address: MAILFROM="Freenom Script <[email protected]>"

Leaving MTA empty or commented disables alerts.

Apprise

Uses external lib to send notification to many services like Telegram, Discord, Slack, Amazon SNS, MS Teams etc.

To enable Apprise notifications, make sure APPRISE is set to the location where you installed the Apprise CLI; the default is /usr/local/bin/apprise. You must also set the APPRISE_SERVER_URLS array to contain one or more server URLs. Notifications are sent to all of the listed server URLs. As with email notifications, Apprise notifications are sent on renewal or update errors.

For details on how to construct server URLs, refer to supported notifications.

Leaving the APPRISE_SERVER_URLS array empty disables Apprise notifications.

DynDNS

To update A or AAAA records the nameservers for the domain must be set to the default Freenom Name Servers.

The record will be added if there is none, or modified if the record already exists. Your current ip address will be used as value (aka "Target").

IP Address

The script uses 3 methods to get your current ip address from a number of public services:

• HTTP method: curl https://checkip.amazonaws.com
• DNS method: dig TXT +short o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com
• Manually: you can also set a static ip address instead of auto detect (see below)

There are a few more HTTP and DNS services defined for redundancy, the script will choose one at random. By default it will retry to get the ip 3 times.

Once your ip is found it's written to "freenom_<domain>.ip4" (or 'ip6'). Same if freenom returns dnserror "There were no changes". This is to prevent unnecessary updates in case the ip is unchanged. To force an update you can remove this file which is located in the default output path: "/var/log".

To manually update: set freenom_static_ip=<your ip> and freenom_update_manual="1", or use the -m option.

Issues

Timeout

In case of dns issues where resolving does not work correctly and curl times out to https://my.freecom.com ('exit code 28'), try setting freenom_http_resolve="1". This make sure curl uses Freenoms own public dns servers.

Account

You need an actual Freenom account, as using Social Sign-in will not work. Workaround: use password reset, see KB and issue #56.

Get ip

Make sure 'curl' and/or 'dig' is installed (e.g. debian: dnsutils or redhat: bind-utils). In case of issues try running curl and dig command manually.

• To list all 'get ip' commands run freenom.sh -i (or grep getIp freenom.conf)
• To disable IPv6: set freenom_update_ipv="4"
• To disable dig: set freenom_update_dig="0"

Files

• Installer: Makefile (make install)
• Script/config: freenom.sh and freenom.conf
• Output:
  • Path: "/var/log/freenom/" (default)
  • Files: freenom.log, freenom_<domain>.ip{4,6}, freenom_renewalResult-<id>.html
• View Results: use freenom.sh -o to view html files

Also see comment "Output files" and freenom_out_dir variable in conf.

Updating

Usually you can just replace "freenom.sh" with the new version, if you're using a separate config file.

An exception is when config options were added/changed which you may need to compare and merge. Such config changes are listed in CHANGES.md.

Uninstall

Run make uninstall.

You can also manually reverse the steps under Installation above (e.g. remove .sh, .conf and scheduler files).

Sources

See included orig dir

• Original script: gist.github.com/a-c-t-i-n-i-u-m/bc4b1ff265b277dbf195
• Updated script: gist.github.com/pgaulon/3a844a626458f56903d88c5bb1463cc6
• Reference: github.com/dabendan2/freenom-dns (nodejs/npm)
• Reference: github.com/patrikx3/freenom (nodejs/npm)

Changes

See CHANGES.md