Keep Your Linux SSH Session From Disconnecting

I’m the jot down of geek that has an SSH client open at all times, connected to my most frequently used servers so that I have instant access for monitoring and anything else.

As such, it irritates me greatly when I get disconnected, so I’m sharing a few methods for keeping your session alive.

it’s possible for you to configure the ssh client to automatically send a protocol no-op code code every number of seconds so that the server won’t disconnect you.

This is setting is sometimes referred to as Keep-Alive or Stop-Disconnecting-So-Much in other clients.Global ConfigurationAdd the following line to the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file:

ServerAliveInterval 60

The number is the amount of seconds before the server with send the no-op code.Current User ConfigurationAdd the following lines to the ~/.ssh/config file (create if it doesn’t exist)

Host *ServerAliveInterval 60

double-check you indent the second line with a space.Per-Host ConfigurationIf you only want to enable keep alive for a single server, it’s possible for you to add that into the ~/.ssh/config file with the following syntax:

Host *hostname.comServerAliveInterval 60

Works quite well, hope it helps somebody else out there.