Keep SSH session alive [closed]

Question

I use ssh -p8520 username@remote_host to login remote server.

Issue:

It is always connected and works properly when I am in the work place. Unfortunately, terminal freezes in 10 - 15 minutes after I connected with the remote server from home.

There's no error/timeout report on the console but the cursor cannot move any more.

When enter w to check the login users, some zombies login users are there, and I have to kill them manually.

This is quite annoying. Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

The ssh daemon (sshd), which runs server-side, closes the connection from the server-side if the client goes silent (i.e., does not send information). To prevent connection loss, instruct the ssh client to send a sign-of-life signal to the server once in a while.

The configuration for this is in the file $HOME/.ssh/config, create the file if it does not exist (the config file must not be world-readable, so run chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config after creating the file). To send the signal every e.g. four minutes (240 seconds) to the remote host, put the following in that configuration file:

Host remotehost     HostName remotehost.com     ServerAliveInterval 240 

To enable sending a keep-alive signal for all hosts, place the following contents in the configuration file:

Host *     ServerAliveInterval 240 

Answer 2

I wanted a one-time solution:

ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=60 [email protected] 

Stored it in an alias:

alias sshprod='ssh -v -o ServerAliveInterval=60 [email protected]' 

Now can connect like this:

me@MyMachine:~$ sshprod