> Is there anything we can do to improve the robustness of our ssh > connections in these portal-based systems? You may want to force the KeepAlive option in your ~/.ssh/config file, and as Steve suggested, use the screen(1) program. It has saved my butt on no few occassions. It's fairly simple to reattach a detached screen session: shell$ screen -ls There is a screen on: 13135.pts-0.skuld (Detached) 1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-chewie. shell$ screen -r If you have more than one screen session open, you'll need to specify exactly which one you want to reattach. shell$ screen -r 13135.pts-0.skuld And if these names are ugly, you can create a screen session with a more friendly socket name with: shell$ screen -S meaningful_name Check out the screen(1) manpage for more details. It really is a VERY robust application and EXTREMELY useful. Attaching and detaching sessions is useful in itself, but one of the more interesting features is being able to cut-n-paste between screen sessions as you would in a vi editor. (Other keybindings are available.) screen was written in the days when a DEC 220 terminal was considered vogue. When someone showed me screen at the U in Duluth, I was instantly hooked. I don't start a shell session without it now. Even my simplest firewall installation will have screen installed. -rwxr-sr-x 1 root utmp 258728 Apr 10 2002 /usr/bin/screen libncurses.so.5 => /lib/libncurses.so.5 (0x40020000) libutil.so.1 => /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x4005e000) libcrypt.so.1 => /lib/libcrypt.so.1 (0x40062000) libpam.so.0 => /lib/libpam.so.0 (0x4008f000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40097000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x401b4000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000) Standard libraries. Nothing fancy. Learn it; live it; love it! -- Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net> http://www.wookimus.net/ assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20030902/71596f09/attachment.pgp