The system throws me away every several minutes, despite what i am doing at the moment - even in the middle of typing something. I tried to change the TMOUT variable, but it did not help. What can be done about that? I am connected to the server via iLO port, and the iLO session stays alive for many hours, therefore it is not its fault…
Thank you!
Via SSH? I do something like this in my ~/.ssh/config file:
# Defaults for SSH
Host *
ServerAliveInterval 300
ServerAliveCountMax 2
I basically send keepalive to keep the session active. This is on my laptop. You can also do it on the server side but it doesn’t make sense if you have lots of servers. Easier to do on the client-side, eg: laptop/desktop that you use.
It could well be firewalls between your machine and the servers causing sessions to disconnect. I’ve had this before, and this is why I use the above configuration.
Hi iwalker,
thank you for your response!
I am not sure the iLO connection uses SSH though. Just in case I changed my server’s LiveInterval and LiveCountMax - but like I had expected it did not make any difference.
It is at the “Linux-to-HP iLO border”… and it is hard to find the answer.
Best regards,
Mike
So there’s multiple bits here; which one is breaking?
- Your client (web browser?) to the ILO; this would be seen as a disconnection from the ILO and force you to reconnect to the ILO itself
- ILO to the server console; this would possibly be seen as a blank session and needing to reconnect
- Login session; this would possibly result in you getting back to the server login prompt.
Also is the server login a text based or X GUI based login?
Hi sweh,
- What’s breaking is the login session: I have to re-login every several minutes.
- It is X GUI-based login.
Thank you for your help! I greatly appreciate it!
If you don’t need an X session then maybe try control-alt-f1 (although you may need to finesse sending that so your local machine doesn’t intercept it! There may be an ILO option) which should get you to a text login. If that stays logged in for longer then something is killing the X session. (Maybe the X server is crashing?). TMOUT won’t affect the X server; it would just affect a terminal window, not the whole X session.
I tried Ctrl-Alt-F1 but maybe at the wrong time (after I’ve got a login screen). It changed nothig, actually - just reloaded the login screen itself.
Now if I do need X session, then where the X server keeps its session timeout settings?
Thank you!
Try ctrl-alt-f2 one of them should have a terminal login prompt!
As for why you’re being killed in the X session will depend on what is going on.
If the X server is crashing then you might see something in dmesg or in /var/log/messages. There might be something in the X server logs (I’ve not run an X server on RL9, but on Debian it’s /var/log/Xorg.0.log; hunt around!). There might be something in ~/.xession-errors or ~/.xsession-errors.old.
Few personal people have a machine with an ILO, so is this an enterprise machine? It’s possible the server team have added software that (mistakenly) kills sessions after a few minutes (I’ve seen that in the past; “Oh we didn’t think about X logins, just terminal!”).
Anyway, a few places to look for information!
Hi Stephen,
Ctrl-Alt-F3 worked in my case. And as long as it took, it looks like in the text-only session the problem is gone. Therefore, the first “thank you” for helping me to understand this is something related to X… On the other hand there are no X-related errors in the logs, which suggests this is some sort of a setting - despite I have no idea at this time, which exactly. I checked the timeout via xset q | grep timeout - and it is 0. What else may it be? Screensaver?
Best regards
OK, that’s good to know. And you have a potential work around for when you don’t need GUI stuff 
For the X session. when you log back in again, is your existing terminal still open and displaying what you had before (eg if you had a terminal window open does it display exactly what was there before), or is it a brand new session?
If it’s a brand new session then it’s not an “idle lock” or screensaver.
If it’s an idle lock then this would imply the ILO isn’t properly emulating USB keyboard/mouse activity. At this point I have to take a step back; because I don’t run RL9 with a GUI (servers don’t have GUIs!) I can’t tell you where to look and how to disable idle lock/screensaver.
Well, yes, like I mentioned it interrupts whatever I am doing at the time (if anything at all) and after re-logging in it takes me back to the same place I was at - letting me to complete my input if I was doing that. Does that, to you, means it is an iLO setup problem?
It feels like it. The X server isn’t aborting, the X session is continuing.
If there is an X idle or screenlock occuring then the ILO isn’t causing activity to avoid it. You would think a keypress would register as “activity”. The ILOs I’ve used registered keyboard/mouse as USB devices to the OS. Dunno about yours.
But as I said, this is the limit of my knowledge.
Additional information that might help other people would be what your platform is (Dell? HP? SuperMicro? Other?) and ILO versions.
I’d also wonder why you’re running a GUI via the ILO; this isn’t Windows 
Stephen,
thank you again! I run GUI session because it i much more convenient to perform setup/maintenance tasks. Anyway, it seems like I found a command that changed the things - I do not experience the interrupts like that (at least so far, keeping my fingers crossed). The command was:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 3600
(the previous value was 300).
I do not understand however why it kicked me off even while I was typing: according to its name this setting should do it only on idle.
Best,