OpenVPN daemon/service stops after brief WAN outage - how to automate?

Finger79

Whenever there is a WAN outage, the existing client OpenVPN tunnel fails (obviously). When the WAN connectivity is re-established, I'd like for the OpenVPN tunnel to also reconnect. As it is, I am having to manually log into pfSense and restart the service.

I've tested this in both OpenVPN 2.3.x on pfSense 2.3.4-p1 and OpenVPN 2.4.x on pfSense 2.4.0-beta.

openvpn_daemon_down_after_wan_disconnect.png_thumb

Finger79

From this thread, they recommend the Service Watchdog package. I am testing this now.

I'm still wondering if there is a more ideal way to prevent the service from failing in the first place during a WAN outage.

SpaceBass

out of curiosity, it looks like your screenshot is of the client end.

Does the client eventually time out and reconnect?

Finger79

@SpaceBass:

out of curiosity, it looks like your screenshot is of the client end.

Does the client eventually time out and reconnect?

Yeah, it's a client setup to a 3rd party VPN provider. And nope, the client doesn't time out and reconnect on its own. The service is completely stopped in pfSense until I manually log in and restart it.

I've had success testing the Service_Watchdog package in a VM. Just enabled it in production. This may be a decent workaround.

I'm still curious what the root cause of the service failing in the first place.