Autoreconnect to VPN Service using Monit + Linux

Autoreconnect to VPN service using Monit on Linux is the streamlined method for keeping you automatically connected to your VPN. VPNs nowadays are an essential part of your internet life. Like anything in the tech world they can have hiccups due to the routing involved. This method will use Monit to ping Google every few minutes and if it fails, it will stop OpenVPN and re-establish a fresh connection to your VPN provider like Private Internet Access or Pure VPN. I will assume you have already installed Monit using this guide. This VPN autoreconnect tutorial is thanks to @manne on the forum who wanted an automated solution for reconnecting to his VPN.

Autoreconnect to VPN Service using Monit + Linux

Preparing for the automation you will need to know where your ovpn file that you use to connect to your VPN is located, I put them in the /etc/openvpn folder

Prepare the VPN automation script, you will need a login file containing your credentials

sudo nano /etc/openvpn/login.txt

Enter your credentials for the VPN on separate lines like this

username
password

So if the credentials were HTPCGuides and I<3MediaServers login.txt would look like this

HTPCGuides
I<3MediaServers

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to save

Create the VPN script to reconnect to your VPN service like Private Internet Access

nano /home/htpcguides/vpnfix.sh

Paste the code below and change htpcguides to your user

Change /etc/openvpn/Sweden.ovpn to the OpenVPN configuration file from your provider

#!/bin/bash

service openvpn stop
echo "$(date +"%F %T") openvpn stopped" >> /home/htpcguides/vpnfixlog.txt
service networking stop
echo "$(date +"%F %T") network stopped, starting network" >> /home/htpcguides/vpnfixlog.txt
service networking start
echo "$(date +"%F %T") network started, starting openvpn" >> /home/htpcguides/vpnfixlog.txt
service openvpn start
echo "$(date +"%F %T") openvpn started, connect to vpn" >> /home/htpcguides/vpnfixlog.txt
cd /etc/openvpn
sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/Sweden.ovpn --auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/login.txt

echo "$(date +"%F %T") script completed" >> /home/htpcguides/vpnfixlog.txt

Make the script have the right permissions so monit doesn't complain

sudo chmod +x /home/htpcguides/vpnfix.sh

Create the Monit configuration for monitoring the VPN connection

sudo nano /etc/monit/conf.d/vpnmonitor

We are going to monitor the openvpn service and execute a script (we create later) if a ping fails

check process OpenVPN matching "openvpn"
    start program = "/usr/sbin/service openvpn start"
    stop  program = "/usr/sbin/service openvpn stop"

check host ovpn with address 8.8.8.8
if failed
        icmp type echo count 6 with timeout 30 seconds
then exec '/home/htpcguides/vpnfix.sh'

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to save

Test the monit configuration

sudo monit -t

If all is well then reload Monit

sudo service monit reload

Now when your VPN loses connection for any reason Monit will execute the vpnfix.sh script and re-establish your VPN connection automatically.

You can check the log file to see when the script has executed.

cat /home/htpcguides/vpnfixlog.txt