Krdytkyu

Am trying to write a script that tests to see if my vpn is connected. When run, the script currently only echos the vpn status. Eventually, I want the script to do much more, but for now, I am trying to work out the testing bit and it's driving me up the wall. No matter what status the VPN is in, the script always reports as "Not Connected".

The command I am using to check status is nordvpn status but that spits out more lines of information than I am looking for, so I grep out the line that reports its connection status. Here is the raw output from nordvpn status when connected.

You are connected to NordVPN.

Current server: us1681.nordvpn.com

Your new IP: xxx.xxx.200.1xx

Current protocol: UDP

Transfer: 1.7 MB received, 500.5 KB sent

This is the output from nordvpn status when I am not connected.

You are not connected to NordVPN.

Here is the script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

NORDSTAT1="$(nordvpn status | grep connected)"

if [ "$NORDSTAT1 = 'You are not connected to NordVPN.'" ]; then

    echo  Not Connected

else

    echo Connected

fi

If I add a line to the script that says echo $NORDSTAT1, it shows that the connection status is correctly stored in the variable. Also, I have confirmed that the string that I am testing against is an exact match of the grep'd line from nordvpn status.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The quoting in the script is wrong. The expression in the line

if [ "$NORDSTAT1 = 'You are not connected to NordVPN.'" ]; then

is one complete string that gets interpolated (variable resolved) to

if [ "You are not connected to NordVPN. = 'You are not connected to NordVPN.'" ]; then

This simply checks whether that string is non-empty. You want

if [ "$NORDSTAT1" = "You are not connected to NordVPN." ]; then

instead to test for equality of the two strings.

The test could also be rewritten with grep -q. It tests for the existence
of a pattern without printing. Instead, the result can be determined from
grep's returncode (which is 0 for found and !=0 for not found).
In that case the test must changed a bit:

#!/usr/bin/env bash



if nordvpn status | grep -q "not connected"; then

    echo "Not Connected"  # the string "not connected" is contained in the output

else

    echo "Connected"      # ... is not contained

fi

I think it's just a matter of taste in this case, though.