autossh upstart conf

tunnel.conf

# tunnel - secure tunnel to my vps

description     "ssh tunnel"
 
start on (local-filesystems and network-device-up IFACE!=lo)
stop on runlevel [!12345]
 
respawn
respawn limit 5 60 # respawn max 5 times in 60 seconds
umask 022
 
script
    echo "DEBUG: `set`" >> /tmp/tunnel.log
    export AUTOSSH_PIDFILE=/var/run/tunnel.pid
    export AUTOSSH_PORT=10007:7
    export AUTOSSH_POLL=60
    export AUTOSSH_FIRST_POLL=30
    exec sudo -H -u user -s autossh -4 -N -D 3128 -o BatchMode=yes -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i /home/user/.ssh/tunnel_id_rsa user@host
end script

Thanks for sharing your upstart script!
Three comments:

• The start on stanza didn't work for me on ubuntu 13.10. Using start on net-device-up did the trick for me.
• add the -E option to sudo to preserve the environment variables you just exported.
• When you've tested your autossh connection, I'd suggest to add the AUTOSSH_GATETIME environment variable and set it to 0 to make autossh ignore the first run failure of ssh (in case the remote host is down when autossh starts).

Bests,

Bram