I am wondering if there is a way to automatically open this link daily on my mac mini. Perhaps there is an app I can install which automatically calls the above link.
I know I can use a web service like no-ip.org but I prefer to do it on my mac.
You could pipe the output to a file by adding something like >~/logfile.txt to the end of the command in crontab. This will allow you to see the output from the last time the command executed.
There are other ways to do logging, but I don’t have the information at hand at the moment.
The request was for an automated method. Any query of one’s IP could be impacted if that machine has an active VPN connection when the command runs. In that case, the cron job would need to be scheduled to run when VPN was not active.
To make things more robust, one could write a script to check the VPN status (e.g. for a work VPN, check for access to specific DNS or other internal servers) and only query the URL if not on VPN then make that script the command called via cron. This would need to be customized for each individual’s environment.
BTW, while emacs was the first Unix editor I learned, I use vi almost exclusively now since that is the only editor I have access to on much of the hardware I support for work.
Nano is pretty ubiquitous now.
Plus it’s non-modal, so you don’t have to switch between typing and moving modes.
(probably ways around that now, given it’s the 21st Century) (right?)
I’d have to see if nano was part of the stripped down OSes running on some of the hardware I support. That said, trying to keep track of where different editors are available was the main reason I switched away from emacs in the first place.
This is how I’ve done this when I needed it in the past. Some routers even have a built-in config option for it. You point the config option at the service you use and it will automatically update the service with your IP address every time it changes or every so often, depending on how to configure it.