I added VPN connectivity to my network and I wanted to make sure the connection to the remote VPN was always running. One way to do this is to use AppleScript to check the connection status. The problem I had was that the AppleScripts that I found no longer worked with MacOS Sierra.
After some digging, I got it to work. Here’s my script:
on idle
set myVPN to "VPN (dallas)" -- set name of VPN connection
try
set isConnected to do shell script "scutil --nc show \"" & myVPN & "\" | grep -c Connected"
on error
set isConnected to "0"
end try
if isConnected = "0" then
do shell script "scutil --nc start \"" & myVPN & "\""
end if
return 15 -- how often to check, seconds
end idle
Modifications
Change the variable myVPN to the name of your network connection. Here mine is VPN (dallas).
Also modify the return value if you want the time between checks to be longer or shorter. Here I’ve set mine to 15 seconds.
References
These are the some of the pages that I started with. The instructions for script generation and auto-boot still apply. So you can still reference them for those other tasks:
- http://osxdaily.com/2016/08/10/auto-connect-vpn-mac-boot-login/
- https://www.maketecheasier.com/auto-connect-vpn-mac-startup/
Some other tech references which helped:
* https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/mac-osx-applescript-run-shell-script/
* “on idle” reference