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philipballew
Asked: 2012-03-13 12:44:36 +0800 CST

How do I prevent telnet from timing out?

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Is there a way to disable a telnet session from my desktop to a server from timing out, ever. This should be done from the client if at all possible.

telnet

1 Answers

  1. Does it have to be telnet? Using plain telnet is highly discouraged due to it not being very secure.

    If you can use SSH, it has two features that will help you: TCPKeepAlive (which is enabled by default, so no need to use it) and ServerAliveInterval (which is disabled by default, so enabling this may help you).

    From the man page (man ssh_config):

     ServerAliveInterval
         Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has
         been received from the server, ssh(1) will send a message through
         the encrypted channel to request a response from the server.  The
         default is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to
         the server, or 300 if the BatchMode option is set.  This option
         applies to protocol version 2 only.

    To use this on a one-time basis:

    ssh -o 'ServerAliveInterval=30' your-server.com

    To use it always, add ServerAliveInterval 30 to your .ssh/config file:

    Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 30
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