If you’re using OpenVPN as your VPN client, you may have experienced occasional connection drops. When this happens, your computer will no longer be connected to the VPN server, potentially exposing your online activity to prying eyes.

To prevent this from happening, you can use a script that periodically checks whether the VPN connection is still active and restarts the OpenVPN client if it’s not. This is commonly known as a VPN watchdog script.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a simple VPN watchdog script and schedule it to run periodically using cron.

Creating the VPN watchdog script

First, let’s create a new file for our VPN watchdog script. We’ll name it vpnwatchdog.sh.

nano vpnwatchdog.sh

In this file, we’ll add the following script:

#!/bin/bash

# Ping the OpenVPN server
ping -c3 192.168.0.1 > /dev/null

# Check the exit status of the ping command
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    # If the ping command failed, restart the OpenVPN client
    /usr/sbin/service openvpn-client restart > /dev/null
fi

This script uses the ping command to check whether the OpenVPN server at 192.168.0.1 is still reachable. If the ping command fails, indicating that the VPN connection is down, the script restarts the OpenVPN client.

Make sure to replace 192.168.0.1 with the IP address of your OpenVPN server.

Save the file and exit the text editor.

Making the script executable

Next, we need to make the script executable. This is done using the chmod command.

chmod +x vpnwatchdog.sh

This command adds the executable permission to the vpnwatchdog.sh file, allowing us to run it as a script.

Scheduling the script to run periodically

Finally, we’ll use cron to schedule the script to run periodically.

crontab -e

This command opens the cron table for the current user. If you’re running this command for the first time, you may be prompted to choose a text editor.

Add the following line to the bottom of the cron table:

*/15 * * * * /home/<your-username>/openvpn/vpnwatchdog.sh

This line tells cron to run the vpnwatchdog.sh script every 15 minutes. Replace <your-username> with your actual username.

Save the file and exit the text editor.

That’s it! Your VPN watchdog script is now scheduled to run every 15 minutes, ensuring that your VPN connection is always active. If the VPN connection goes down, the script will automatically restart the OpenVPN client.

In conclusion, a VPN watchdog script is a simple but effective way to prevent VPN connection drops. By periodically checking the VPN connection and automatically restarting the OpenVPN client if necessary, you can ensure that your online activity remains private and secure.