Telnet Times Out

Question

Level 1

8 points

Telnet Times Out

I have been using puTTY WIth great success on windows but when I switched over to using Telnet on the Mac (via Terminal) I keep getting timed-out. Is there a setting somewhere that I am missing?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Posted on Jun 13, 2007 1:27 PM

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Answer 1

hereagain Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2007 2:24 PM in response to BDAqua

Actually it starts out running fine but when there is no activity for about 5 to 10 minutes is when then session just quits working (it appears to hang) so you have to close the terminal window and re-run Telnet. puTTY has a keepalive attribute set it is set to 0.

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Answer 2

hereagain Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2007 2:30 PM in response to Rick Van Vliet

Ports are correct, that is why I can run for hours as long as I have some activity going on. It's when I walks away for 5 to 10 minutes that it hangs. This also happens on my Mac Mini. puTTY running on Windows 2000 in Parallels (on the same box) runs fine, never times out.

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Answer 3

Jun 13, 2007 2:37 PM in response to hereagain

OK, then do you have some kind of 'stay-alive' (keepalive) set with puTTY?
They both "seem" to run fine if they're busy, you just need to look at whether the hosting server kicks you out. This may have nothing to do with macTerminal vs puTTY on Win...I'm thinking out loud here.

But, FWIW, my puTTY sessions do abend frequently in XP or Win2000, on a real PC (not parallels). 5-10 minutes getting kicked out of a Linux server after inactivity doesn't sound unusual, I guess.

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Answer 4

hereagain Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 13, 2007 2:49 PM in response to Rick Van Vliet

When I look at the puTTY Connection Panel there is a field "Seconds between keepalives (0 to turnoff) " and the field is set to 0. So I assume that it is not sending anything. I would think that this would be a common problem with the Mac Telnet since most people would have some level of inactivity. I can't believe everyone would be satisfied with re-logging back in.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Jun 13, 2007 1:47 PM in response to hereagain

I'm thinking you might open Activity Monitor and view the usage of lookupd.

What are the ping times on the Mac to that site?

Do you have good DNS numbers in Network and maybe the Router/Modem?

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Answer 6

Jun 13, 2007 2:25 PM in response to hereagain

Also might want to see if you have your ports correctly set.
Are you just telnetting, or should you be SSHing?
(22 for SSH, 23 for telnet)

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Answer 7

Jun 13, 2007 4:18 PM in response to hereagain

Try this: run Terminal and enter:

$ sudo sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.always_keepalive=1

The interval might need to be tweaked, I think it's something like 20 minutes, but I'm not sure.

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Answer 8

hereagain Author

Level 1

8 points

Jun 17, 2007 5:07 PM in response to philsmith_

Thanks everyone, this solved the problem. Had to increase the timeout.

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Answer 9

Jun 18, 2007 4:28 AM in response to hereagain

Give phil some helpful or solved points.
That's a neighborly way of giving him credit, credibility, and a way to reward him with points.

Have a nice day.

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