grack.com

Back when I first started SSH (around the RedHat 4.x days), I’d occasionally be connected to another host via SSH when the host or the network connection would suddenly lock up. I’d end up trying to figure out which SSH process was the one that was frozen and kill -9ing it. That is, until someone showed me how to use SSH escape sequences. Occasionally I see people talking about killing frozen SSH sessions and it reminds me to pass on this tip.

If SSH is running on an interactive terminal, it listens for an escape character whenever it is listening for a the first character after a newline (or the first character in the stream). By default, this character is the tilde (~), but you can specify a different character using the -e argument.

You can get a list of escape sequences by typing “~?” after a newline:

Supported escape sequences:
  ~.  - terminate connection (and any multiplexed sessions)
  ~B  - send a BREAK to the remote system
  ~C  - open a command line
  ~R  - Request rekey (SSH protocol 2 only)
  ~^Z - suspend ssh
  ~#  - list forwarded connections
  ~&  - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate)
  ~?  - this message
  ~~  - send the escape character by typing it twice
(Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)

The one I use most frequently is ~.. This one kills the SSH terminal, along with any of the port forwardings you might have started as part of the command-line or in your .ssh/config file. ~& is also pretty useful when using port forwarding: it closes the SSH terminal, backgrounds SSH and leaves the port forwardings alive until the last one terminates.

These escape sequences will work, even if the underlying TCP/IP connection is toast and SSH seems completely unresponsive. If SSH isn’t picking up your escape sequences, make sure that you’re hitting the enter key first. It won’t pick up escape sequences in the middle of a line.

Read full post