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How to disable timeout in ssh during login prompt (login session inactivity) in Linux

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You are one of those guys who need more time while putting in the credentials during ssh logins, but due to the login session inactivity timeout, you are not able to login into the system in time. 

# time ssh -l testuser server01
Password:
Connection closed by 192.168.10.10

real    2m06.000s
user    0m0.015s
sys     0m0.004s

This short note lists steps to disable the login session timeout in ssh.

Types of inactivity timeouts

There are 2 types of inactivity timeouts.

  1. login session inactivity: This is before you log in and you are at the Login: prompt.
  2. shell session inactivity: This is after you login and the session is left unattended.

Disabling login session inactivity during ssh login

1. Please put “LoginGraceTime 0” into /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

# vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
LoginGraceTime 0

2. Restart the ssh service for the changes to take effect.

# service sshd restart

This will disable the auto disconnection. If you do not want to disable the auto disconnect, you can increase the time for auto disconnect to a sufficiently large value. Just set the seconds after “LoginGraceTime” parameter.

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