How to keep alive the VPN connection?

I'm using NetworkManager and OpenVPN on linux.

The problem is I get random disconnections, especially when idle.

So I was thinking maybe there was an option to keep it alive. I have seen examples for OpenVPN config files, but I don't think I'm using one. I have set up everything directly from the NetworkManager. I found the NetworkManger config file for my current connection, and it has these sections: [connection], [vpn], and [ipv4]. Does any of those have a keepalive option? What's the syntax, and how does it work?

Solution 1:

According to the documentation here, the KeepAlive parameter is probably what you were looking for.

# The keepalive directive causes ping-like
# messages to be sent back and forth over
# the link so that each side knows when
# the other side has gone down.
# Ping every 10 seconds, assume that remote
# peer is down if no ping received during
# a 120 second time period.
keepalive 10 120

This should either be added to the OpenVPN connection profile as a new line, or to the Advanced Configuration on the server (likely /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf).