Always connected / retry forever - how ?

YumYum

Hi

I am currently testing OpenVPN AS.

The goal is to have "always on" functionality in Windows through the software client.
- Client should run as a service before Windows logon, check - it is working with autologin profile
- Client must always reconnect if connection for some reason is broken, not working

Any ideas how to configure the client to reconnect forever if connection for some reason is broken? or another way to accomplish this?

Best regards
Jesper

The Johan

I think your best bet is to use the OpenVPN open source client. It comes with a service that automatically starts any connections in c:\program files (x86)\openvpn\config folder. Stick an autologin profile in there, set the service to start automatically at boot, and you should be good. This works completely in the background.

If necessary - if you have really bad connectivity problems that really frustrate the OpenVPN connection quite badly so that it can't automatically reconnect on its own - you could add a simple watchdog batch script, again as a service (you can run your own service fairly easily - there are tools for this) that pings an address through the VPN tunnel and if it fails repeatedly, to stop/start the OpenVPN service.

You could also choose to implement a router on-site with some Linux variant on it that does the connection and run your watchdog script there and have your Windows clients have some way of reaching that router (static routes etc).

YumYum

Thank you for the reply novaflash

As mentioned, I am currently testing with the commercial OpenVPN AS version, including client.
It does indeed come with a client service that starts automatically at boot, and with an autologin profile it works as intended.

My problem is, if there for any reason is a internet connection failure for a longer period, then the client does not reconnect when internet connection is re-established.

I am thinking of trying adding "keepalive 10 60" to the client config according to page 31
https://openvpn.net/images/pdf/OpenVPN_Access_Server_Sysadmin_Guide_Rev.pdf

Any recommendations on a tool that runs as a service (Windows), can ping through the tunnel, and restart the OpenVPN service if no ping reply ?

The Johan

Yes, you can mess with keepalive values.

> Any recommendations on a tool that runs as a service (Windows), can ping through the tunnel, and restart the OpenVPN service if no ping reply ?

Just a simple batch script turned into a service like with srvany.exe/instsrv.exe is the simplest path, or just an AutoIT script using services_udf - that might be neater as you can create a file you can drop into place.

No I take that back. The simplest path is a batch script that pings something, and if it fails, restart the openvpn service. Then schedule it as a task in Windows to run every x amount of minutes.