Amazon EC2 ssh timeout due to inactivity

Well, this applies to any Linux instance that you may be remotely connected to, depending on how sshd is configured on the remote server. And depending on how your localhost (developer machine) ssh config is done. But essentially in some instances the sshd host you’re connecting to times you out pretty quickly, so you have to reconnect often.

This was bothering me for a while. I usually am off and on all day on Linux shell on EC2 instances. And it seemed every time I come back to it, I’d be timed out, causing me to have to reconnect. Not a huge deal, just a nuisance.

To remedy this, without changing the settings on the remote server’s sshd config, you can add the following line to your localhost ssh config. Edit ~/.ssh/config file and add the following line:

ServerAliveInterval 50

And it’s as simple as that! It seems that AWS EC2s are set up to time you out at 60 seconds. So a 50 second keep-alive interval prevents you from getting timed out so aggressively.

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