Script to Automatically Detect and Restart Linux PPTP Client
Category : How-to
The default PPTP client for Linux does not automatically start on boot, or restart on a failed or dropped connection. I have written a short script to ping your VPN server gateway IP address and start the PPTP client if a ping does not succeed.
See my other post if you have not yet set up your PPTP VPN client.
Create this script and make it executable:
vi /root/cron/pptp_cron.sh chmod +x /root/cron/pptp_cron.sh
Add the below script to the file and change the following attributes for your own values:
- your-vpn-host-or-ip-address
- your-vpn-username
- your-vpn-password
#!/bin/bash
HOST=your-vpn-host-or-ip-address
PPTPUSER=your-vpn-username
PPTPPASS=your-vpn-password
DATE=`date`
PINGRES=`ping -c 2 $HOST`
PLOSS=`echo $PINGRES : | grep -oP '\d+(?=% packet loss)'`
echo "$DATE : Loss Result : $PLOSS"
if [ "100" -eq "$PLOSS" ];
then
echo "$DATE : Starting : $HOST"
/usr/sbin/pptp pty file /etc/ppp/options.pptp user $PPTPUSER password $PPTPPASS
echo "$DATE : Now running : $HOST"
else
echo "$DATE : Already running : $HOST"
fi
Add the following entry to your cron to execute the script every minute.
crontab -e
*/1 * * * * /root/cron/pptp_cron.sh >> /var/log/pptp_pinger.log 2>&1
See my other post if you have not yet set up your PPTP VPN client.
10 Comments
Gary Alan Lee
10-Oct-2014 at 12:36 pmI have tried this a number of times and for some I can’t get it to work on CentOS 5.11….. What am I doing wrong…? I added a pppd Call at the end of my rc.local config file and the vpn starts fine that way on boot but after about 15 or 20 min that darn system drops the VPN connection….. Bummer…!!!! I get a bunch of command errors when I try to fire-up your sh….
Gary
james.coyle
11-Oct-2014 at 11:06 amWhat errors do you get?
Pablo
18-Dec-2014 at 8:56 pmppt supports persist and maxtries to retry forever to reconnect. No need of additional script:
http://www.vionblog.com/debian-pptp-client-configuration/
http://linux.die.net/man/8/pppd
Ghosty
19-Feb-2015 at 2:23 pmHi,
Thanks for the script! i’ve got a quick qeustion. is it possible to use a command in this script for including the site configuration file stored in /etc/ppp/peers and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets ?
Thanks in advance !
Marcel
Oisín
25-Jul-2015 at 2:22 pmFor the start-on-reboot issue, I think this should suffice:
$ sudo update-rc.d pptpd defaults
Andres Gregori
15-Sep-2015 at 7:13 pmIn my case, I’ve setting cron from /etc/cron.d/pptp-cron file
How ever in order to works I’ve to put this at beggining file:
MAILTO=root
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
*/1 * * * * root /root/cron/pptp_cron.sh >> /var/log/pptp_pinger.log 2>&1
seems to be a normal bug on Debian:
http://serverfault.com/questions/98280/pptp-pon-fails-when-called-via-cron-debian
Nagarjuna Reddy
29-May-2018 at 4:19 pmHi i have phased some problems in ppp connection i tried to connection in automatically.
can you please solve that problem . I am using BeagleBoneBlack.
salman.baig
9-Jan-2019 at 10:23 amcan you please tell me is it working on opensuse
Stan
22-Jan-2019 at 10:15 amconnect: Network is unreachable
Tue Jan 22 11:37:01 EET 2019 : Loss Result :
/root/cron/pptp_cron.sh: line 11: [: : integer expression expected
Tue Jan 22 11:37:01 EET 2019 : Already running : 8.8.8.8
line 11 is:
if [ “100” -eq “$PLOSS” ];
why?
Huan
15-Aug-2020 at 12:59 pmI tried your script and it worked perfectly.
Thank you so much.