Saturday, March 17, 2012

Tourist offices & Dynamic DNS

This picca was made for the OSG Tourist offices. There really helpful if you are new in OSG, and want to know where the action / sweetspots are to be found on the grid.
You can find the OSG tourist offices at wright plaza, and at the SimSquare Metaverse astro shopping area.
They are maintained by respectively Mercalia Beck and Richardus Raymaker. Handy to know if you have built your very own beauty, and want to share it with the rest of the OSG visitors. Alos check back regularly, for fresh new updates.

I got some questions on how to create a free dyndns account. Here's the howto.
Register an account at https://account.dyn.com/entrance/ and do the email confirmation. It will open a page with all kinds of paid services, and an option for free trial. Dont click any of those ! Instead click my services in the top of the screen ( its a button ).

In there you can add a Host name. Choose yourpreferredname.dyndns.org or any other URL you like. Write it down. tick the box for wildcard to enable. Service type is Host with IP adress. Fill in the public IP adress (typically its already displayed ).  Add to cart. (it will require you to start a trial now, but mind it will ask for credit card details at the end. You can put those in, and immediately quit the trial after registering. You get to keep the 1 free domain name, and wont get billed.)  Done.
If you dont have a creditcard, or dont want to give those credentials, you can try http://www.no-ip.com or another free dynamic DNS service. Same service, no credit card requirements.

Typically most routers have an option for dyndns. You put in the username / password of your dyndns provider, and your chosen domain name, and hit update. Now the router will be reachable through the URL you made, and update automatically when  the IP adress changes. If you dont have this option in your router, you can download dyndns updater software from  This URL . Install, and follow instructions. Self explainatory.

Last step is to change your public IP adress in your regions.ini, to the DynDNS name, and restart your OSG server.