Google Domains Dynamic DNS and IPv6

I’ve been wanting to use a dynamic address in my personal domain and IPv6. While I read that it should be possible, finding the exact method of configuring ddclient to do so was not obvious to me. The default installation configures everything to register an IPv4 address and finding specific configuration examples using IPv6 was hard. It turns out that finding examples was hard because the process itself is easy.

Go to domains.google.com, configure your domain to include dynamic DNS hosts, add the hostname you want to register, and retrieve the specific credentials for that hostname. There are help pages describing that process at google. It will create a record with the hostname you specify, and an A record (IPv4) with a 1 minute time to live.

Google Domains

Install ddclient using apt and go through the debconf wizard to enter the credentials. It will set up the default configuration using IPv4.

sudo apt install ddclient -y

domains.google

ddclient –force –verbose to see if errors occur

Google Domains IPv4 address registered

Manually editing /etc/ddclient.conf and changing the use= statement to usev6= and running ddclient a second time will switch to registering the IPv6 address.

wim@WimPiZeroW-Wim:~ $ sudo cat /etc/ddclient.conf
# Configuration file for ddclient generated by debconf
#
# /etc/ddclient.conf

protocol=googledomains \
usev6=if, if=wlan0 \
login=**************** \
password='***************' \
wimpizerow-wim.wimsworld.com
wim@WimPiZeroW-Wim:~ $

another ddclient –force –verbose to confirm changes didn’t create errors

running sudo systemctl confirms that ddclient.service is loaded active and running. If the address were to change, it should automatically be updated in the dynamic domain entry.