/he-ipv4-perl

Perl script to automatically update Hurricane Electric IPv6 Tunnel Endpoint Address

Primary LanguagePerl

What

This is a maintenance script to ensure that your Hurricane Electric Tunnel Broker IPv6 tunnel is always listening for connections from your current external IPv4 address.

This script is helpful if you have a dynamic IP address from your ISP. The script is also logical and does not needlessly update the IPv6 address via Hurricane Electric's Tunnel Broker API. I've provided an explanation on how the script works here:

Please note: This was written and tested with Debian Squeeze (6.0), but it may work on other Debian-derived distributions. It was also written with the assumption that your tunnel is configured in a similar fashion as the way it is explained in my blog post:

Set up

To get this script up and running you will need to install some modules from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN):

If you have App::cpanminus (cpanm) installed you can install the needed modules with this command:

cpanm Logger::Syslog YAML::Tiny LWP::Protocol::https WWW::Mechanize

At this point you only need to download the script and schedule it to run with cron.

  1. Download the script and save it to /usr/local/sbin/he-ipv4.pl using either curl or wget:
  • curl -o /usr/local/sbin/he-ipv4.pl "https://raw.github.com/theckman/he-ipv4-perl/master/he-ipv4.pl"
  • wget -O /usr/local/sbin/he-ipv4.pl "https://raw.github.com/theckman/he-ipv4-perl/master/he-ipv4.pl"
  1. Make the file executable:
  • chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/he-ipv4.pl
  1. Edit the file using your preferred text editor. Make sure all configuration items are set properly.
  2. Edit the root user's crontab (crontab -e) to run this script post reboots and every 15 minutes:

@reboot /usr/sbin/he-ipv4.pl >/dev/null 2>&1

*/15 * * * * /usr/sbin/he-ipv4.pl >/dev/null 2>&1

Configuration

The configuration is all done within the script file itself. There is a configuration section near the top of the file.

  • $userID: this is your UserID value from the Main Page of HE's Tunnel Broker
  • $userPass: an MD5 hash of your Tunnel Broker password:
  • echo -n YourPassword | md5sum
  • $tunnelID: the unique tunnel ID number from your tunnel's information page
  • $tunnelName: this is the local name for the Tunnel Broker interface. In my blog I use the name "he-ipv6"
  • @listURL: this is a list of the URLs that will be used to obtain the external IP address. This should not, in most cases, need to be touched

#License Copyright (c) 2011-2012 Tim Heckman and contributors

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.