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Motivation Behind This Cheatsheet

Used when I was in a Jam: No physical access to the host.  Host had a dynamic ip.  Router without ddns support. Luckily not behind a firewall.

The Cheatsheet

I used the following python script to send myself the IP address of the host.

This script requires:
  - Another web host to host a "whatismyip" page. see Host Your Own "What is my IP" Service.
  -A gmail account (i used a dummy gmail account so that I didn't have to setup email on my server, Also because my email credentials are clearly in clear text in the script)

#! /usr/bin/env python
import urllib
import smtplib  

url = urllib.URLopener()
#resp = url.open('http://whatismyip.org')       #no longer provides pure text response
resp = url.open('http://agenthost.com/myip.php')
html = resp.readline()

fromaddr = 'myserverhasemail@gmail.com'
toaddrs  = ['addy1@gmail.com', 'someotheraddy@gmail.com']
msg = 'My IP is' + html + ' Right NOW!'
  
# Credentials (if needed)  
username = 'mygmailaccountname@gmail.com'
password = 'mygmailpw'
  
# The actual mail send  
server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com:587')  
server.starttls()  
server.login(username,password)
for toad in toaddrs:
    server.sendmail(fromaddr, toad, msg)  
server.quit()

Put this script somewhere and give it a name (~/my_ip_now),

add executable permissions:

chmod a+x ~/my_ip_now

Then, depending on how often you want updates, add a cron job to run the script periodically

Further Discussion

This script is not very efficient, but can be usefull when a quick solution is needed. Also, the email format is pretty crude and doesn't show up in thunderbird. I was able to see my msg using my iphone email, so it did the job at the time.