How to set up an automatic (re)start of a background ssh tunnel

I am a beginner user of linux, and also quite newbie at ssh and tunnels.

Anyway, my goal is to maintain a ssh tunnel open in background.

In order to do that, I wrote the following batch that I then added into crontab (the batch is automatically processed every 5 minutes during workdays and from 8am to 9pm). I read in some other thread in stackoverflow that one should use autossh that will ensure the ssh will always be ok through a recurrent check. So did I....

#!/bin/bash
LOGFILE="/root/Tunnel/logBatchRestart.log"
NOW="$(date +%d/%m/%Y' - '%H:%M)" # date & time of log

if ! ps ax | grep ssh | grep tunnelToto &> /dev/null
then
    echo "[$NOW] ssh tunnel not running : restarting it" >> $LOGFILE
    autossh -f -N -L pppp:tunnelToto:nnnnn [email protected] -p qqqq
    if ! ps ax | grep ssh | grep toto &> /dev/null
    then
            echo "[$NOW] failed starting tunnel" >> $LOGFILE
    else
            echo "[$NOW] restart successfull" >> $LOGFILE
    fi
fi

My problem is that sometimes the tunnel stops working, although every thing looks ok (ps ax | grep ssh > the result shows the two expected tasks : autossh main task and the ssh tunnel itself). I actually know about the problem cause the tunnel is used by a third party software that triggers an error as soon as the tunnel is no more responding.

SO I am wondering how I should improve my batch in order It will be able to check the tunnel and restart it if it happens to be dead. I saw some ideas in there, but it was concluded by the "autossh" hint... which I already use. Thus, I am out of ideas... If any of you have, I'd gladly have a look at them!

Thanks for taking interest in my question, and for your (maybe) suggestions!

Solution

Instead of checking the ssh process with ps you can do the following trick

create script, that does the following and add it to your crontab via crontab -e

#!/bin/sh

REMOTEUSER=username
REMOTEHOST=remotehost 

SSH_REMOTEPORT=22
SSH_LOCALPORT=10022

TUNNEL_REMOTEPORT=8080
TUNNEL_LOCALPORT=8080

createTunnel() {
    /usr/bin/ssh -f -N  -L$SSH_LOCALPORT:$REMOTEHOST:SSH_REMOTEPORT -L$TUNNEL_LOCALPORT:$REMOTEHOST:TUNNEL_REMOTEPORT $REMOTEUSER@$REMOTEHOST
    if [[ $? -eq 0 ]]; then
        echo Tunnel to $REMOTEHOST created successfully
    else
        echo An error occurred creating a tunnel to $REMOTEHOST RC was $?
    fi
}

## Run the 'ls' command remotely.  If it returns non-zero, then create a new connection
/usr/bin/ssh -p $SSH_LOCALPORT $REMOTEUSER@localhost ls >/dev/null 2>&1
if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
    echo Creating new tunnel connection
    createTunnel
fi

In fact, this script will open two ports

port 22 which will be used to check if the tunnel is still alive
port 8080 which is the port you might want to use

Please check and send me further questions via comments