ipemailer

A tiny but handy script that notifies you via email (with the address of the new IP) if your dynamic IP changes.

Main purpose:

Created by me originally when I wanted to save money from not registering a domain name.

I was with an ISP that gave out dynamic IPs for consumers, probably to discourage people from running servers on a home internet connection. So many problems were had when my IP got changed either due to the lease time being up or the modem restarted due to power outage(s).

Requirements:

bash
mutt
gnutls-bin
openssl
libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit
dnsutils
a Gmail account

Installation:

Clone it:

git clone git@github.com:esn89/ipemailer.git

Get packages:

apt-get install libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit gnutls-bin openssl mutt dnsutils

Place the script in your $PATH for execution, I prefer /usr/local/bin

cd ipemailer
cp ipscript /usr/local/bin/

Make a .muttrc file:

touch ~/.muttrc

and using your editor of choice, copy this into the .muttrc

set from = "youremail@gmail.com"
set realname = "whateveryouwish"
set imap_user = "youremail@gmail.com"
set imap_pass = "password"
set folder = "imaps://imap.gmail.com:993"
set spoolfile = "+INBOX"
set postponed ="+[Gmail]/Drafts"
set header_cache =~/.mutt/cache/headers
set message_cachedir =~/.mutt/cache/bodies
set certificate_file =~/.mutt/certificates
set smtp_url = "smtp://youremail@smtp.gmail.com:587/"
set smtp_pass = "password"
set move = no
set imap_keepalive = 900
set ssl_starttls=yes
set ssl_force_tls=yes

A word of caution is that, because this is stored in plain-text in your home directory, I highly recommend making a new Gmail account just for this purpose. In the event your server gets compromised, you don't lose your main email account with your personal information too.

Or you could encrypt it on your machine like so

Set it as a cron job for automation:

crontab -e

add this line:

0 5 * * * /usr/local/bin/ipscript

This has the script run every day at 5am that way, the longest I go without SSH-ing into my server, worst case is a day.

Problems I have ran into:

If you get something along the lines of an SASL error, it could be that Google is blocking 'less secure apps' from sending email. To disable it and allow mutt to send email on your behalf, from your server go here to change the settings.

It could be that your server is not on the list of trusted devices that you normally log in from, so you can change that here