Script to Automatically Detect and Restart Linux PPTP Client

Written by Rudy Thursday, 22 September 2016 07:16

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.

Create this script and make it executable:

1 2	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"

Add the following entry to your cron to execute the script every minute.

1	crontab -e

1	/1 * * * /root/cron/pptp_cron.sh >> /var/log/pptp_pinger.log 2>&1