After moving to the new place, I realized that my website kept going down every other day. This immediately struck my interest as my IP address kept changing. At first, I thought it was a trigger-happy housemate restarting the Internet connection every time the average ping deviated by a few milliseconds. After configuring my A records for like the third time, I felt it was time to investigate.
After a couple times of Googling, it turns out that the ISP at this new place is a smaller ISP. This ISP rotates the IP address every couple of days. So how would the laborious process of identifying my IP address, and then updating my A records be inevitable? Turns out not.
The solution was to use Dynamic DNS, which actively updates my A records with my registrar. To do so, I had to install ddclient on my Debian install. However, the available ddclient on Debian Stretch was rather out of date. Getting the newer version was a simple affair of adding Buster's Unstable repos, then enabling it to start during boot. But wait, isn't Debian Buster already in stable? Turns out I had already configured ddclient some time ago prior moving to this new place, a time where Buster was still brewing in Unstable. What a pleasant surprise when I fired up sources.list.d only to find that everything was already there. Thank you, past self.
After a bit of sleuthing, it turns out that I had to enable Dynamic DNS with my registrar, Namecheap. I had to also change my A records to what Namecheap calls A+ Dynamic DNS Records. With my A+ Dynamic DNS Records ready and ddclient's configuration double checked, I hesitantly left my server to its own devices.
It has been almost two weeks since that day, and everything is working fine. No downtime, no more stressful hours worrying about my server as I was stranded at work. What a relief. Well that's all I have to write for this post. Thanks for reading.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
- Calvin Coolidge