Say someone starts a SSH session through Putty to a CentOS box, and they leave it sit idle for a while. Where can I set an idle timeout so it will disconnect any sessions idle for a certain time period?

rjo98,

In the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, uncomment and change the ClientAliveInterval, then restart the sshd services. According to the MAN page of sshd_config:

ClientAliveInterval
Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the client, sshd(8) 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.


ClientAliveInterval 60 would drop the connection after 60 seconds of inactivity.

2 members found this post helpful.

great, thanks!

Glad to help!! You may have to watch for the users though!! They can set their own /etc/ssh/ssh_config and add the line:

ServerAliveInterval 60

and send keepalives to the server every 60 seconds and get around that..... pesky kids!

1 members found this post helpful.

hahaha, i'll keep my eyes peeled for that little trick.

Looking on some older servers, I don't see that option set but they do disconnect. Was that maybe enabled by default or something in older versions of ssh?

ServerAliveInterval 60 is a line the client can add to their /etc/ssh/ssh_config rather than on the servers /etc/ssh/sshd_config

I never touch the server's sshdd_config for this issue.
I have used in my ~/.ssh/config
and I can idle for days.

ok, because looking at another server, I don't see that setting configured in the main config file, and in the user's ~/.ssh/ I don't see a config file. I think I'm either missing something, or maybe there's another way to cause a similar outcome? or it was just a default setting in older versions that did it no matter what, which is why I can't find it. not a big deal, i'm just confused.

Actually, it was my mistake... that line gets added to /etc/ssh/ssh_config... not ~/.ssh/ssh_config

This still requires root access, but I was referring to "users" just as the client machine rather than the actual user's access/permissions...

Ah ok, so it's only the global setting in the main config file then. Still makes me wonder why other older servers will disconnect an idle ssh session if they don't have that set. Maybe there's a different setting out there that disconnect any idle connect (not connection type specific).

maybe it's the shell killing the session on those other servers. I'm going to test it again, but on this new server, I don't think it's killing sessions either with only ClientAliveInterval set. maybe i need to enable another setting in there that goes with it.

I'll post back if i've gone crazy and idle sessions actually are killed with just that setting