[Tut] Keep SSH Session Alive

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Keep SSH Session Alive

5/5 – (1 vote)

Problem Formulation

I just tried to run AutoGPT on an EC2 instance using SSH from my local Windows machine. But here’s the annoying part: the connection always closes and AutoGPT can only work in small ~10 minute increments. When I return to my machine, I need to SSH into my instance and restart the program.

Problem Formulation: Your SSH connection to a remote server works properly at your workplace, but it freezes after 10-15 minutes when connecting from home. You don’t receive any error messages, but you notice zombie login users that need to be killed manually.

Quick and Easy Solution (Client-Side)

To prevent an SSH connection from closing when the client goes silent, you can configure the client to send a keep-alive signal to the server periodically.

Create a configuration file in your home directory at

Code:

$HOME/.ssh/config

, and set its permissions to

Code:

600

using

Code:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

after file creation. To send a keep-alive signal every 240 seconds, for example, add the following lines to the configuration file:

Code:

Host * ServerAliveInterval 240

You can get this done with the following two commands on Linux:

Code:

printf '%s\n' 'Host *' ' ServerAliveInterval 240' > ~/.ssh/config chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

You can then check the file content using the command

Code:

cat ~/.ssh/config

like so:


Alternative Solution: Server Side

In some cases, you have access to the server’s SSH settings. In that case, add an entry

Code:

ClientAliveInterval 60

to the file

Code:

/etc/ssh/sshd_config

. I used the Vim editor in the terminal to accomplish this.



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