There are many cases where the builtin IPSEC connection of IPFIRE does not restart itslelf, for example if there is a new dial in after 24 hours and you get a new ipadress.

Here I would like to present a possible solution, especially for IPFIRE. The host we check every five minutes (300 seconds) is 192.168.10.1.

Copy this file to /opt/ and name it "checkPing" without an extension:

#!/bin/bash
while [ ! $Internet ]
do
/usr/bin/php /opt/checkPing.php 192.168.10.1
sleep 300
done

Make it executable with:

chmod a+x /opt/checkPing

Copy this file also to /opt/ and name it "checkPing.php".

<?php 
function PsExecute($command, $timeout = 60, $sleep = 2) { 
    // First, execute the process, get the process ID 

    $pid = PsExec($command); 

    if( $pid === false ) 
        return false; 

    $cur = 0; 
    // Second, loop for $timeout seconds checking if process is running 
    while( $cur < $timeout ) { 
        sleep($sleep); 
        $cur += $sleep; 
        // If process is no longer running, return true; 

        if( !PsExists($pid) ) 
            return true; // Process must have exited, success! 
    } 

    // If process is still running after timeout, kill the process and return false 
    PsKill($pid); 
    return false; 
} 

function PsExec($commandJob) { 

    $command = $commandJob.' > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!'; 
    exec($command ,$op); 
    $pid = (int)$op[0]; 

    if($pid!="") return $pid; 

    return false; 
} 

function PsExists($pid) { 

    exec("ps ax | grep $pid 2>&1", $output); 

    while( list(,$row) = each($output) ) { 

            $row_array = explode(" ", $row); 
            $check_pid = $row_array[0]; 

            if($pid == $check_pid) { 
                    return true; 
            } 

    } 

    return false; 
} 

function PsKill($pid) { 
    exec("kill -9 $pid", $output); 
} 

if(PsExecute("ping -c 1 ".$argv[1],5,1))
{  }
else
{ PsExec("/etc/init.d/ipsec restart"); }


?>

You might ask, why we need an external PHP script for doing that job. The reason is, that the IPFIRE's ping command does not support the -w option, and there is no timeout command available in the IPFIRE environment, so the PHP script takes care of the ping command timing out if a IPSEC connection is lost.

Finally, we need to create a service and let it start while booting. Therefore you need to copy this content to a new file in "/etc/init.d/" and name it "checkPing":

 #! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          checkPing
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:      
# Default-Start:     3
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: check ipsec connection
# Description:       check ipsec connection
### END INIT INFO


do_start () {

    /opt/checkPing &   
    exit 0
}

case "$1" in
  start|"")
    do_start
    ;;
  restart|reload|force-reload)
    echo "Error: argument '$1' not supported" >&2
    exit 3
    ;;
  stop)
    killall checkPing
    ;;
  status)
    exit 0
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: checkPing [start|stop]" >&2
    exit 3
    ;;
esac

:

After that, you have to execute:

chmod a+x /etc/init.d/checkPing
ln -s /etc/init.d/checkPing /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S51checkPing
ln -s /etc/init.d/checkPing /etc/rc.d/rc6.d/K01checkPing
ln -s /etc/init.d/checkPing /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/K01checkPing

Reboot your IPFIRE and your IPSEC connection should be reinitialized after the connection gets lost.

Update 28.05.2013:

Use this as an alternative for /opt/checkPing if you have some kind of web interface (like router) available on your foreign network. The router's URL is 1.2.3.4 in my example.

#!/bin/bash
while [ ! $Internet ]
do
/usr/bin/wget -T 5 -t 1 http://1.2.3.4 -O /dev/null -o /dev/null
if [[ $? != 0 ]] ; then
date >> /var/log/checkPing
/etc/init.d/ipsec restart
fi
sleep 30
done

 This script creates a log entry in /var/log/checkPing every time the IPSEC is restarted, too.