I've dealt with similar symptoms before and I've generally come to the conclusion that it's a crappy firewall between hosts. I managed to solve the problem, for my users at least, by setting this in my sshd_config: ClientAliveInterval 300 >From man sshd_config: ClientAliveInterval Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the client, sshd will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client. The default is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to the client. This option applies to protocol version 2 only. Going by what taht says, and the fact that it solves the problem for me, I figure that some firewalls will drop state during idle ssh sessions. And like I said, ClientTAliveInterval fixed it for my users that were having the same symptoms. Anyway, it's worth a try before rewiring your house :) Dan On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 01:29:20PM -0500, greg wm wrote: > hi, > > i think there's room for improvement in the way either ssh or the linux > kernel handles error recovery. > > my ssh connections frequently "go dead". after many minutes, or hours, > one of these "dead" connections may well "wake up" again. > > in the meantime, opening fresh connections to the very same machines is > almost never a problem. > > hence when one of the newer connections "goes dead", i can open up an > even newer one, or often, resume using one of the older ones that has > come alive again. > > it's likely that the immediate cause of all this is bad wiring in my > house. and qwest, in their famous molasses fashion, is likely to get it > sorted eventually. > > in the meantime i'd say there's a golden opportunity here if someone out > there responsible for error recovery code were interested in doing some > testing using my nice bad connection testbed. i could imagine it being > applicable either at the ssh app level or kernel networking level. if > anyone "has connections" with any such folk, or otherwise thinks this > might be worth pursuing, i'll be happy to cooperate.. > > greg > > Greg Whitley Mott > IT Coordinator > NonviolentPeaceforce.org > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list