bad configuration option in git

Question

Yesterday our team member changed two lines in the ssh_config file because it was impossible to get up to go to the bathroom without the ssh tunnel breaking. Now, git can't pull anything to the machine from our repo. Here is the error we're getting (git was working fine the day before yesterday):

Fetching origin
/etc/ssh/ssh_config: line 49: Bad configuration option: ClientAliveInterval
/etc/ssh/ssh_config: line 50: Bad configuration option: ClientAliveCountMax
/etc/ssh/ssh_config: terminating, 2 bad configuration options
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
error: Could not fetch origin

I looked in the ssh_config file, and the lines that were changed look fine to me:

ClientAliveInterval 300
ClientAliveCountMax 2

Is there actually something wrong with these values, or could someone have changed something else? I ask that because I don't see how those two configuration options could cause this, and I haven't found any remotely relevant solutions from Google.

Answer 1

Compare man ssh_config vs man sshd_config. ClientAliveInterval and ClientAliveCountMax are server options, not client options, which is why you are seeing that error. Your ssh client configuration is invalid, causing the client to exit.

Server configuration options would typically go in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.