NuttySquirrel

I have my own server, but from time to time my IP address changes and when I am away from my Linux box I can't log into it, because of the address change. I'm new to all this, so what I'd like to do is create a script that notifies me when the IP address of my machine changes by emailing me the IP address to my yahoo account.

I know I have to do something like this:

1) ifconfig > ipaddress.txt
2) tell it to wait a few minutes, maybe like two or so
3) get the IP address again only, save it to a different file like ipaddress2.txt...somewhere around here I know I have to cut the IP address out of the txt file
4) Then compare the two and if they're the same, do nothing, and if they are different email me the new IP

I know the steps I need to take to get it to work right, I just have a hard time figuring out the code to get it to work right. Thanks for any help.

burnit

Why don't used a free DNS? You can setup a free DNS service for your host (www.dyndns.org). This DNS assign a name to your computer, and an utility (ddclient, wich is included in debian for example) will notify the IP change to the DNS.

So you can access to your machine always using the name of your computer...

I use it and there was no problem!!!

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TheGreen

no-ip.com does this as well, and they have their own client thats easy to use. I use no-ip.com for a ton of domain names. They are good. Also if you use IPCop as a firewall gateway solution, it has built in support for dyndns and no-ip. really nice.

NuttySquirrel

I know I can do that but I still think it'd be cool to try to figure this out. Can someone help me start it in the right direction?

deek

What I am thinking is there is probably a line switch on the ifconfig command to just display the current ip address of say, eth0. This is assuming this machine takes on the external address from your ISP. If not, then things get a bit more complicated, as you are then only looking at your internal addresses, which won't help on the outside world.

Anyways, after you have that working, then you output to a file, say ipcurrent. I would then create an ipold file, with the same ip. So, your process now, would be to rename ipcurrent to ipold (moving the ip address to the old file for comparison), then run the ifconfig (with switches) and output that to ipcurrent.

Now you have two files. Use whatever programming/scripts you want to do a file compare (again, if you are only outputting the ip address, you shouldn't have to worry about cleaning the data, as it should always just be an ip address in the file). Using this code, if they are the same, you do nothing, if not, then you can send an email, with the ipcurrent file data to your yahoo account.

I believe if you have sendmail (or maybe another mail service), you can easily build a script to send email via command line. So you just write that script and insert the ipcurrent data in your email.

Obviously, I have not done any coding here for you, but I feel if I get into anymore detail, I might as well just write the whole code myself (which I don't feel like doing!). That should point you in the right direction.

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NuttySquirrel

OK this is what I have so far...I need some more assistance.

#!/bin/bash
extip="`/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' | sed -e 's/.*://'`"
extint="ipaddress1"
wait two minutes how do I do this?
extip="`/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2}' | sed -e 's/.*://'`"
extint="ipaddress2"
not sure if any of the stuff below is correct
for (ipaddress1 <> ipaddress2)
do email me@yahoo.com
else do nothing

deek

If you are doing two files, then you really don't have to wait two minutes. If you put it on a cron job, say, running the program every 15 minutes, or maybe ever hour, then that second file, will always be comparing to whatever your IP address was an hour ago (or 15 minutes ago).

By default, whatever frequency you run it at, that is what you will comparing to. Make sense?

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sharonenoch

I also need some help over here since my problem was also related to the sending email part of this question

I would like to know how to send an email with an attachment using the sendmail command from commandline ( the command that should be given). What data I have is the mailserver ipaddress, smtp username, and a smtp password

NuttySquirrel

OK, got it almost set up right...but from for ipaddress1 <> ipaddress2 down it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong?

#!/bin/bash
extip="`/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk
'{print $2}' | sed -e 's/.*://'`"
extint="ipaddress1"
extip="`/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk
'{print $2}' | sed -e 's/.*://'`"
extint="ipaddress2"
for ipaddress1 <> ipaddress2
do sendmail time -q2m me@yahoo.com
else

deek

I am not familiar with much bash stuff, but the first thing I would do is, before going into the for (which I am assuming is a type of "if" logic, as that is all that needs to be done), print/display the contents of ipaddress1 and ipaddress2, to make sure those variables are holding what you think they should.

If they are, and the logic is not working correctly, there may be an "invisible" character or something that you are not accounting for.

Although, it could just be you need to use an "if" statement, as "for" is a loop, and you don't need to loop, right?

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