For more information about this service, please see SSH Authman service.

Configuring SSH client timeouts

When a network session is transiting a firewall, the firewall may close sessions it deems idle - ones that have not sent packets for some time. People are most likely to notice this behaviour on long-lasting SSH sessions and may find that their connection is terminated earlier than they would like. This can be fixed with a configuration change on the client-side, which will cause it to send a "keepalive" packet at fixed intervals. IST recommends a 15-minute keepalive.

Windows

Using putty, edit the configuration for your session, and under Connection, change "Seconds between keepalives" to 900.

Open

Unix/Linux/MacOS

The default SSH client for most Unix-like operating systems is OpenSSH. Versions of OpenSSH greater than 3.8 support the setting ServerAliveInterval. This can be configured globally or for individual hosts.

• Edit your personal SSH configuration file (usually $HOME/.ssh/config) and add or modify the relevant line(s).

• If you are running a version of OpenSSH older than 3.8, you should upgrade to a more recent version.

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