Re: ClientAliveInterval question

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Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 14:34:01 +1100
To: Jason Parsons <jparsons3@mac.com>

Jason Parsons wrote:
>> The next release, however, will have a ssh_config option
>> "ServerAliveInterval". It's already in the development snapshots now.
>
> Perfect. What is the expectation for connecting to a non-OpenSSH server
> if the client has ServerAliveInterval set? Is keepalive support somehow
> negotiated at connection?

A quick look at the diff shows that it periodically sends a global
request with want-reply set. My guess it would work with any server,
but I haven't tested it. Try it and let us know...

> Also, it would be nice to be able to set a ClientAliveInterval, but also
> set "ClientAliveCountMax 0". This would cause keepalives to be sent,
> but the session to never be torn down if keepalives aren't acknowledged
> (for interoperability with ssh clients that don't do keepalives
> correctly). The documentation is unclear on if this would work as I
> would hope. Does openssh already work this way, and if not, can this
> feature be added?

By my reading this would not work, and your sessions will be
disconnected at the first timeout. You could, however, set it to its
maximum value (it's a signed int, so even with ClientAliveInterval=1, on
most platforms your sessions would be good for about 68 years :-)

(Note that doing this would reduce the value of ClientAliveInterval for
conserving server resources.)

Alternatively you could open and enhancement request at
bugzilla.mindrot.org.

-- 
Darren Tucker (dtucker at zip.com.au)
GPG key 8FF4FA69 / D9A3 86E9 7EEE AF4B B2D4  37C9 C982 80C7 8FF4 FA69
     Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgement.

• Previous message: Darren Tucker: "Re: ClientAliveInterval question"
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