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telnet timeout

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madra

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Feb 12, 2003
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Where in AIX is timeout set for a telnet session ?

We want to keep each session open indefinately.


thanks


madra
 
I think telnet will remain open indefinitely as long as you don't have either of these environment variables set:
TMOUT
TIMEOUT

Check your login files (~/.profile, /etc/profile, etc.) for these entries.
 
The TMOUT and TIMEOUT variables will only come into play if you sit at an idle shell prompt for the designated time period.

If you're connecting through a firewall, there's usually a timeout on the firewall for tracking sessions. If there's no traffic on a connection within the timeout period, the firewall drops the connection to free up memory for tracking active connections. To both your telnet client and the telnet server it will appear as if the other dropped the connection.

If you're able to use PuTTY as your telnet client (it can do straight telnet as well as ssh), there's a setting that can be configured to send null packets on a periodic basis as a "keepalive".

Another option, on the AIX side, is to look at the "no" command's man page, particularly the options starting with "tcp_keep".

- Rod



IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+

A Simple Code for Posting on the Web
 
There is also a timeout setting for the login prompt. See usw stanza in /etc/security/login.cfg (attribute logintimeout).

The default is "logintimeout = 60". You'd think that setting it to zero would mean no timeout, but it uses the default of 60 seconds also. I set it to a large number: 3000000 i.e. more than one month - close enough to forever to me.

There's a tool to do this, saves you editing the config file manually (and getting it wrong or messing up the file ;-))

Code:
chsec -f /etc/security/login.cfg -s usw -a logintimeout=3000000


HTH,

p5wizard
 
thanks for you replies

A bit further discussion with the customer and it could well be the RF terminals and their firmware.

Also, found that it is a known issue with AIX5.3 and APAR IY894729 (TCP keepalive issue) in TL5 SP3 or TL6 resolves it.

thanks again
 
Does the timeout setting presented above work with CDE sessions as well?

I set the logintimeout=15 ...... After 15 minutes I wasnt logged out, but rather the terminal was locked. How do I go about enabling auto log of a idle session?

-FrankieAIX
 
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