How to Keep Your Linux SSH Session Alive

Global Configuration

Add the following line to the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file:

ServerAliveInterval 60

The number is the amount of seconds before the server with send the no-op code.

Current User Configuration

Add the following lines to the ~/.ssh/config file (create if it doesn’t exist)

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 60

Make sure you indent the second line with a space.

Per-Host Configuration

If you only want to enable keep alive for a single server, you can add that into the ~/.ssh/config file with the following syntax:

Host *hostname.com
   ServerAliveInterval 60