localtunnel: Crashing after a few minutes

ngrok is great, but I’m not paying $5/month just to get custom subdomains.

I use a Ruby script that restarts localtunnel when it crashes (edit: fixed bug that Dave84c pointed out):

require 'optparse'

options = {:subdomain => 'defaultdomain', :port => 3000}

parser = OptionParser.new do|opts|
    opts.banner = "Usage: localtunnel.rb [options]"
    opts.on('-s', '--subdomain subdomain', 'Subdomain') do |subdomain|
        options[:subdomain] = subdomain;
    end

    opts.on('-p', '--port port', 'Port') do |port|
        options[:port] = port;
    end

    opts.on('-h', '--help', 'Displays Help') do
        puts opts
        exit
    end
end

parser.parse!

def ordinal(number)
  abs_number = number.to_i.abs

  if (11..13).include?(abs_number % 100)
    "th"
  else
    case abs_number % 10
      when 1; "st"
      when 2; "nd"
      when 3; "rd"
      else    "th"
    end
  end
end

def ordinalize(number)
  "#{number}#{ordinal(number)}"
end

launch_count = 0

while true
    launch_count += 1
    puts "Running localtunnel for the #{ordinalize(launch_count)} time"
    `lt --port #{options[:port]} --subdomain #{options[:subdomain]}`
end

I’ve been running this for a couple of days, and it’s restarted it 218 times. There must be occasional disruptions, but I haven’t noticed them.

ETA: You’ll need Ruby to run that script. Ruby comes on OSX and on most Linux distributions (not sure about Windows), so it should just run if you save it as a Ruby file. For example, if you save it as localtunnel.rb, you should be able to run it with:

ruby localtunnel.rb --port 3000 --subdomain yourdomainhere

I vote for leaving this issue open until it’s fixed. Closing it makes it seem like localtunnel is more stable than it is. People end up frustrated as a result.

A simple bash script to restart it every time it crashes

#!/bin/bash

function localtunnel { lt -s subdomain --port port_number }

until localtunnel; do echo “localtunnel server crashed” sleep 2 done

+1 for @dreki. Keep this issue open.

Hey @michaelkeenan, I think there is an error in the Code.

opts.on('-s', '--subdomain subdomain', 'Subdomain') do |name| options[:subdomain] = subdomain; end

`opts.on('-p',` '--port port', 'Port') do |age|
    options[:port] = port;
end`

shouldnt the block parameters match the option: name => subdomain, age =>port ?

Cheers, Dave