Autossh monitors a ssh connection and reconnects the ssh-session if the connection fails.

To automatically log in you need to use an authentication key.

The package, slightly outdated, can be found in the 'oldpackages' feed.

Alternative packages:

• https://github.com/hewenhao2008/autossh-openwrt
• https://github.com/aa65535/openwrt-autossh

sshtunnel is a simpler, functionally-identical package. (depends on OpenSSH so higher disk space requirements)

• You want to forward a local port (e.g. the webserver/ssh) to a remote server.
• If your client running OpenWrt is behind a NAT, this allows to connect to a server that is not behind a NAT and create a reverse tunnel to the local ssh server.

1. Install autossh

   opkg install autossh

2. Create a key

   dropbearkey -t rsa -f /etc/dropbear/id_rsa

   • On LEDE 17.01.x use

     dropbearkey -t rsa -f /root/.ssh/id_dropbear

3. dropbearkey will print the public key, starting with ssh-rsa.
   • You can reprint the key using

     dropbearkey -y -f /etc/dropbear/id_rsa

   • or you can write it to a file (e.g. /tmp/pubkey)

     dropbearkey -y -f /etc/dropbear/id_rsa | grep ssh-rsa > /tmp/pubkey

4. Add the key to the authorized_keys file on your server, e.g. copy pubkey file to the server and do

   cat pubkey >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Autossh is configured using the Unified Configuration Interface (/etc/config/autossh).

To get ssh working you need to replace localhost in 2222:localhost:22 of the ssh variable to the local ip.