Need SSH/SCP use clarification

[swedegeek]

I use SSH and Vim on my server quite a bit. It's a big reason why I signed on with Dathorn and why I stay. It's much more productive than making local edits, save, copy/upload, run.

Previously, if I ended up getting distracted or stepped away for a bit, my sessions would timeout. No big deal. This week, the particular account I was using would say I didn't have shell access when I tried to log back in. Going to cPanel, sure enough, shell access would be unchecked, so I'd have to turn it back on to log in again. Weird.

Today, I was logged in before work, then ended up leaving with the sessions still active. I logged into to my home machine from work and saw my 2 sessions had messages on them saying this was my final warning and if I idled any more sessions the entire account would be suspended (not just shell).

I cannot recall ever receiving a "first" warning, which is at least implied when calling this notice "final". Some will surely say I'm lucky to get a warning at all, but I'm really not seeing any credible issue with not being anal about closing all my sessions every time I go watch a show, take a break to catch up on reddit/freshmeat/etc. and the like. I _highly_ doubt someone's going to break into my home in order hijack my SSH session and nuke my web site.

I have spent a good chunk of time today scouring the forums, TOS and AUP looking for something that would have been my clue that idling a couple SSH sessions was a suspend-able offense. I found nothing to that effect. Not even the jailshell login message indicates any conditions I (knowingly) violated. If idling secure connections is so bad, why are FTP connections allowed at all? Also, doesn't sshd have a configuration to timeout sessions,so admins don't even need to be involved? As stated, I thought the timeouts were already in place and idling has never garnered this kind of response before.

Posting this in the forums is not intended to make a public spectacle of my situation, but I thought that it could be useful for others also interested in/needing this info.

Anyone have any insights? I just wrote a testimonial a few weeks ago, but right now I'm feeling more like I'm in a game where the rules are made up along the way.

Thanks!

[AndrewT]

I've personally sent you several broadcast warnings via SSH over the past two weeks. All that we ask is very simple: log out if you are not using it. We just don't like to see SSH connections go idle for hours as we have no idea if these were left open on purpose or by accident. The safest way for us to avoid problems is to simply make sure that they get logged out of when they are not actively being used. The last thing that we (and you) want is someone leaving open an SSH connection on a computer that is accessible by others.

[AndrewT]

To clarify further, we certainly don't care if you leave your connection open and idle for a while. It is just when we begin to consistently see idle connections for an hour or more on the same user that we start taking action.

The first warnings all stated that SSH access on your account would be disabled if this continued. This is why you found SSH access disabled on your account but after two times of doing this with no apparent resolution you were sent the "final" warning that you referred to in your post.

[swedegeek]

Okay, well, I guess the messages got lost somewhere in the shuffle until today. I definitely wasn't trying blatantly ignore any warning messages. No idea why I missed them, except I can think of some instances where my Putty windows had inexplicably closed out on me. It must have been due to how the session ended, and that would have made the broadcasts disappear. I also occasionally use secureCRT and with a couple with clicks it'll blank the screen and reconnect a closed session. Perhaps a quick email would have been as easy and a bit more reliable delivery.

Anyway, thanks for the speedy reply as always, as well as the further explanation. Regardless of this being mostly a communication mix up, I think it's still good that it got archived in the forums. I couldn't find this actually being "asked" anywhere, so hopefully it's insightful to others as well. Surely, I'm not the only Dathorn customer who can get in the habit (frequent or not) of walking away from a terminal and not really think/worry about it much.

[AndrewT]

I will say that if something like this just happens a couple of times for a given user we don't even bother with it aside from closing the connection. But when it seems like it is becoming a habit we do start sending the warnings. We've considered sending e-mails but most of the time we can't guarantee that the logged in user is even one of our customers. You would have certainly gotten an e-mail prior to suspension. Sometimes it just takes a brief mentioning of a suspension to get things taken care of.

[swedegeek]

Sometimes it just takes a brief mentioning of a suspension to get things taken care of.

Yep, sure did!