Description of problem: The ProtocolKeepAlives config option (~/.ssh/config) which does work in Debian Woody 3.0 does not work in RHEL 2.1 We have NFS mounted home directories (on the RHEL machine) which are mounted from multiple client machines including Debian 3.0 and RHEL machines. We need this keepalive option because we make a lot of connections to machines behind isdn-dialup connections and we do not want the line to drop halfway in the process. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): RHEL [seth@coltex-2 work]$ ssh -V OpenSSH_3.1p1, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090602f Debian seth@lsintra:~$ ssh -V OpenSSH_3.4p1 Debian 1:3.4p1-1.woody.3, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090603f How reproducible: Put the following option in ~/.ssh/config ProtocolKeepAlives 20 make an ssh connection to a remote machine. Actual results: [seth@coltex-2 work]$ ssh remotehost /users/home/seth/.ssh/config: line 1: Bad configuration option: ProtocolKeepAliv es /users/home/seth/.ssh/config: terminating, 1 bad configuration options Expected results: seth@lsintra:~/.ssh$ ssh remotehost seth@remotehost's password: Additional info: http://www.sc.isc.tohoku.ac.jp/~hgot/sources/openssh-watchdog.html
ProtocolKeepalives are a third-party patch incorporated by Debian. Current versions of OpenSSH have keepalives (ServerAliveInterval, ServerAliveCountMax, ClientAliveInterval and ClientAliveCountMax) and Debian has dropped the ProtocolKeepAlive patch (although though they kept the old options as compatibility aliases for the "official" options.
Well, the options you mentioned above do not work in the RHEL 2.1 distribution. So that doesn't get me any further. I want to have keepalive support in the 2.1ES distribution. Upgrading to ES3 is not an option for me, and using a selfcompiled option breaks support and up2date. [seth@coltex-2 .ssh]$ ssh lsinet /users/home/seth/.ssh/config: line 1: Bad configuration option: ClientAliveInterval /users/home/seth/.ssh/config: terminating, 1 bad configuration options
those are sshd options, not ssh. they go in the sshd_config file for the daemon, not the client's config file.
Closing as there has been no activity for many months, and this appears to have been explained as not a bug. Thanks for the explaination, BTW!