Ubuntu – How to break out of ssh when it locks

ssh

I frequently ssh into my box at home from school, but usually when I change classes and my computer suspends, the pipe will be broken. However, ssh simply locks up – Ctrl+c, Ctrl+z and Ctrl+d have no effect.

It's annoying to have to restart my terminal, and even more annoying to have to close and re-create a new screen window.

So my question, is there an easy way to make ssh die properly (i.e. when the pipe fails "normally" it will exit with a message about a broken pipe)? Or do I have to figure out what the PID is and manually kill it?

Best Answer

Normal keys are forwarded over the ssh session, so none of those will work. Instead, use the escape sequences. To kill the current session hit subsequently Enter, ~, ..

(Keep in mind that in international keyboards where ~ is set to be a composing character, you have to hit it twice: Enter, ~, ~, .)

More of these escape sequences can be listed with Enter, ~, ?:

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
     ~V/v - decrease/increase verbosity (LogLevel)
     ~^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.)

You can close the list of Escape sequences by hitting Enter.

Notice that because hitting ~~ causes ssh to send the ~ instead of intercepting it, you can address N nested ssh connections by hitting ~ N times. (This only applies to ~s that directly follow an Enter.) That is to say that Enter~~~~~. terminates an ssh session 5 layers deep and keeps the other 4 intact.

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