SSH sessions will timeout, and the client will be disconnected automatically from the server after being idle or inactive for a while.

SSH server will prompt the client with the following error message upon disconnection: 

user@host:~$ Connection to example.com closed by remote host. Connection to example.com closed.

Idle SSH connection is closed due to the SSH servers' configuration, often by default, to avoid hanging sessions and free up resources.

You can increase SSH connection timeout by configuring TCPKeepAlive and related settings from both the SSH server and the client.

Methods to prevent SSH connection timeout:

Avoid SSH timeout from the server

If you have administrative access to the SSH server, you can configure it so that it will not disconnect idle sessions. This could be achieved by setting the appropriate parameters for TCPKeepAlive, ClientAliveInterval, and ClientAliveCountMax on the server as per the following steps:

  1. Edit SSHd configuration file using your favorite editor. 

    $ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

  2. Set these options as the followings: 

    TCPKeepAlive no  ClientAliveInterval 30 ClientAliveCountMax 240

    It means that the server will not send the TCP alive packet to check if the client's connection is working, yet it will still send the encrypted alive message every 30 seconds. It will only disconnect after at least 2 hours of inactivity.

    The following is the full explanation for the options; 

     TCPKeepAlive          Specifies whether the system should send TCP keepalive messages to the other side.  If they are sent, death of the          connection or crash of one of the machines will be properly noticed.  However, this means that connections will die          if the route is down temporarily, and some people find it annoying.  On the other hand, if TCP keepalives are not          sent, sessions may hang indefinitely on the server, leaving “ghost” users and consuming server resources.           The default is “yes” (to send TCP keepalive messages), and the server will notice if the network goes down or the          client host crashes.  This avoids infinitely hanging sessions.           To disable TCP keepalive messages, the value should be set to “no”.           This option was formerly called KeepAlive.   ClientAliveCountMax          Sets the number of client alive messages (see below) which may be sent without sshd(8) receiving any messages back          from the client.  If this threshold is reached while client alive messages are being sent, sshd will disconnect the          client, terminating the session.  It is important to note that the use of client alive messages is very different          from TCPKeepAlive (below).  The client alive messages are sent through the encrypted channel and therefore will not          be spoofable.  The TCP keepalive option enabled by TCPKeepAlive is spoofable.  The client alive mechanism is valu‐          able when the client or server depend on knowing when a connection has become inactive.           The default value is 3.  If ClientAliveInterval (see below) is set to 15, and ClientAliveCountMax is left at the          default, unresponsive SSH clients will be disconnected after approximately 45 seconds.  This option applies to pro‐          tocol version 2 only.   ClientAliveInterval          Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the client, sshd(8) will send a          message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client.  The default is 0, indicating that          these messages will not be sent to the client.  This option applies to protocol version 2 only.

  3. Restart the SSHd service.

    Related: How to start, restart and stop SSH server service

Avoid SSH timeout from the client

If you don't have administrative access to the server, you can configure your SSH client to send the alive message to the server instead to achieve the same result. This is done via the ServerAliveInterval option for the SSH client.

You can do this by updating /etc/ssh/ssh_config (applying the setting to every user in the system) or in ~/.ssh/config (single user). Set the following option to have the client send the alive packet every 30 seconds to the server; 

ServerAliveInterval 30

The other alternative is to manually set the ServerAliveInterval option every time you're connecting to a server by using the -o ServerAliveInterval=<time-in-second> prefix as the following example; 

$ ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=30 [email protected]