NAME

     autossh — monitor and restart ssh sessions

SYNOPSIS

     autossh [-V] [-M port[:echo_port]] [-f] [SSH_OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

     autossh is a program to start a copy of ssh and monitor it, restarting it as necessary
     should it die or stop passing traffic.

     The original idea and the mechanism were from rstunnel (Reliable SSH Tunnel). With version
     1.2 of autossh the method changed: autossh uses ssh to construct a loop of ssh forwardings
     (one from local to remote, one from remote to local), and then sends test data that it
     expects to get back. (The idea is thanks to Terrence Martin.)

     With version 1.3, a new method is added (thanks to Ron Yorston): a port may be specified for
     a remote echo service that will echo back the test data. This avoids the congestion and the
     aggravation of making sure all the port numbers on the remote machine do not collide. The
     loop-of-forwardings method remains available for situations where using an echo service may
     not be possible.

CONTROLLING SSH

   SSH exits
     autossh tries to distinguish the manner of death of the ssh process it is monitoring and act
     appropriately. The rules are:

     1.      If the ssh process exited normally (for example, someone typed "exit" in an
             interactive session), autossh exits rather than restarting;

     2.      If autossh itself receives a SIGTERM, SIGINT, or a SIGKILL signal, it assumes that
             it was deliberately signalled, and exits after killing the child ssh process;

     3.      If autossh itself receives a SIGUSR1 signal, it kills the child ssh process and
             starts a new one;

     4.      Periodically (by default every 10 minutes), autossh attempts to pass traffic on the
             monitor forwarded port. If this fails, autossh will kill the child ssh process (if
             it is still running) and start a new one;

     5.      If the child ssh process dies for any other reason, autossh will attempt to start a
             new one.

   Startup behaviour
     If the ssh session fails with an exit status of 1 on the very first try, autossh

     1.      will assume that there is some problem with syntax or the connection setup, and will
             exit rather than retrying;

     2.      There is a "starting gate" time. If the first ssh process fails within the first few
             seconds of being started, autossh assumes that it never made it "out of the starting
             gate", and exits. This is to handle initial failed authentication, connection, etc.
             This time is 30 seconds by default, and can be adjusted (see the AUTOSSH_GATETIME
             environment variable below). If AUTOSSH_GATETIME is set to 0, then both behaviours
             are disabled: there is no "starting gate", and autossh will restart even if ssh
             fails on the first run with an exit status of 1. The "starting gate" time is also
             set to 0 when the -f flag to autossh is used.

   Continued failures
     If the ssh connection fails and attempts to restart it fail in quick succession, autossh
     will start delaying its attempts to restart, gradually backing farther and farther off up to
     a maximum interval of the autossh poll time (usually 10 minutes).  autossh can be "prodded"
     to retry by signalling it, perhaps with SIGHUP ("kill -HUP").

   Connection setup
     As connections must be established unattended, the use of autossh requires that some form of
     automatic authentication be set up. The use of RSAAuthentication with ssh-agent is the
     recommended method. The example wrapper script attempts to check if there is an agent
     running for the current environment, and to start one if there isn't.

     It cannot be stressed enough that you must make sure ssh works on its own, that you can set
     up the session you want before you try to run it under autossh

     If you are tunnelling and using an older version of ssh that does not support the -N flag,
     you should upgrade (your version has security flaws). If you can't upgrade, you may wish to
     do as rstunnel does, and give ssh a command to run, such as "sleep 99999999999".

OPTIONS

     -M port[:echo_port]
             specifies the base monitoring port to use. Without the echo port, this port and the
             port immediately above it ( port + 1) should be something nothing else is using.
             autossh will send test data on the base monitoring port, and receive it back on the
             port above. For example, if you specify “-M 20000”, autossh will set up forwards so
             that it can send data on port 20000 and receive it back on 20001.

             Alternatively, a port for a remote echo service may be specified. This should be
             port 7 if you wish to use the standard inetd echo service.  When an echo port is
             specified, only the specified monitor port is used, and it carries the monitor
             message in both directions.

             Many people disable the echo service, or even disable inetd, so check that this
             service is available on the remote machine. Some operating systems allow one to
             specify that the service only listen on the localhost (loopback interface), which
             would suffice for this use.

             The echo service may also be something more complicated: perhaps a daemon that
             monitors a group of ssh tunnels.

             Setting the monitor port to 0 turns the monitoring function off, and autossh will
             only restart ssh upon ssh's exit. For example, if you are using a recent version of
             OpenSSH, you may wish to explore using the ServerAliveInterval and
             ServerAliveCountMax options to have the SSH client exit if it finds itself no longer
             connected to the server. In many ways this may be a better solution than the
             monitoring port.

     -f      causes autossh to drop to the background before running ssh. The -f flag is stripped
             from arguments passed to ssh. Note that there is a crucial a difference between -f
             with autossh, and -f with ssh: when used with autossh ssh will be unable to ask for
             passwords or passphrases. When -f is used, the "starting gate" time (see
             AUTOSSH_GATETIME) is set to 0.

     -V      causes autossh to display its version number and exit.

ENVIRONMENT

     Other than the flag to set the connection monitoring port, autossh uses environment
     variables to control features. ssh seems to be still collecting letters for options, and
     this seems the easiest way to avoid collisions.

     AUTOSSH_DEBUG
             If this variable is set, the logging level is set to to LOG_DEBUG, and if the
             operating system supports it, syslog is set to duplicate log entries to stderr.

     AUTOSSH_FIRST_POLL
             Specifies the time to wait before the first connection test. Thereafter the general
             poll time is used (see AUTOSSH_POLL below).

     AUTOSSH_GATETIME
             Specifies how long ssh must be up before we consider it a successful connection. The
             default is 30 seconds. Note that if AUTOSSH_GATETIME is set to 0, then not only is
             the gatetime behaviour turned off, but autossh also ignores the first run failure of
             ssh. This may be useful when running autossh at boot.

     AUTOSSH_LOGLEVEL
             Specifies the log level, corresponding to the levels used by syslog; so 0-7 with 7
             being the chattiest.

     AUTOSSH_LOGFILE
             Specifies that autossh should use the named log file, rather than syslog.

     AUTOSSH_MAXLIFETIME
             Sets the maximum number of seconds that the program should run. Once the number of
             seconds has been passed, the ssh child will be killed and the program will exit.

     AUTOSSH_MAXSTART
             Specifies how many times ssh should be started. A negative number means no limit on
             the number of times ssh is started. The default value is -1.

     AUTOSSH_MESSAGE
             Append message to echo message sent when testing connections.

     AUTOSSH_NTSERVICE
             (Cygwin only.) When set to "yes" , autossh sets up to run as an NT service under
             cygrunsrv. This adds the -N flag for ssh if not already set, sets the log output to
             stdout, and changes the behaviour on ssh exit so that it will restart even on a
             normal exit.

     AUTOSSH_PATH
             Specifies the path to the ssh executable, in case it is different than the path
             compiled in.

     AUTOSSH_PIDFILE
             Write autossh pid to specified file.

     AUTOSSH_POLL
             Specifies the connection poll time in seconds; default is 600 seconds.  Unless
             AUTOSSH_FIRST_POLL is used, the first poll time will set to match the poll time. If
             the poll time is less than twice the network timeouts (default 15 seconds) the
             network timeouts will be adjusted downward to 1/2 the poll time.

     AUTOSSH_PORT
             Sets the connection monitoring port. Mostly in case ssh appropriates -M at some
             time. But because of this possible use, AUTOSSH_PORT overrides the -M flag. A value
             of 0 turns the monitoring function off.

DEBIAN-SPECIFIC BEHAVIOR

     The debian version of autossh uses a wrapper to automatically select a free monitoring port
     and -M overrides AUTOSSH_PORT, see /usr/share/doc/autossh/README.Debian for further
     information.

AUTHOR

     autossh was written by Carson Harding.

SEE ALSO

     ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), cygrunsrv(1).