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Symptoms

ssh connection to raspberrypi hangs after rougly 30 seconds, unless I ping the raspberrypi.

The raspberry pi is at raspberrypi.lan

I have a script ~/troubleshoot.sh

#! /bin/bash
uptime
free
while :; do
    sleep 1; echo $SECONDS
done

I can run this while logged into raspberrypi.lan via ssh, or run it remotely from my laptop:

ssh raspberrypi ./troubleshoot.sh
 19:34:35 up 11 days, 23:05,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          439596       73516      112016         160      254064      308364
Swap:         102396      101940         456
1
2
3

... 4, 5, 6 etc ...


27
28
29

This will hang when $SECONDS is around 30 ... it might be as low as 28, or as high as 34. When run remotely, I have to use Ctrl+C to terminate.

If I'm logged into raspberrypi.lan via ssh, I see the same behavior, but I have to use Enter ~ ..

... so something is causing the ssh session to hang.

If I open a separate terminal window on my laptop and run

ping raspberrypi.lan

the ssh session will not hang; I can stay logged on indefinitely.

History

I had an old version of Raspbian running on the pi -- so old that the repositories were well out of date. ssh worked under that version. I loaded Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) on a new SD card and enabled ssh, then noticed that my ssh sessions were freezing after a short period of time.

Environment

  • Hardware: Raspberry Pi 1B

  • OS/Distro Version: Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)

  • Network: Wired, dual stack (ipv4, ipv6)

    $ host raspberrypi.lan raspberrypi.lan has address 192.168.12.189 raspberrypi.lan has IPv6 address 2607:fb90:2c88:43b2:b04c:80cb:0:167

  • IP addresses are dynamic on both IPV4 and IPV6

  • sshd: OpenSSH_8.4p1 Raspbian-5+deb11u1, OpenSSL 1.1.1n 15 Mar 2022

  • /etc/ssh/ssh_config: Include /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/.conf Host * SendEnv LANG LC_ HashKnownHosts yes GSSAPIAuthentication yes

  • no files in /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/

  • /etc/ssh/ssh_config is identical to that of another server that I have no issues logging in to.

  • ~/.ssh/config on laptop: Host raspberrypi User barton Hostname raspberrypi.lan ServerAliveInterval=60 ServerAliveCountMax=10

What I've tried so far

  • ~/troubleshoot.sh shows uptime -- this is now over 12 days. This rules out power issues causing the pi to reboot.
  • raspberrypi.lan is constantly pingable -- this isn't a network connectivity issue.
  • All ip addresses on the lan are dynamic; this isn't an IP address conflict.
  • I used the check.sh script posted by @goldilocks in his reply to Raspberry pi always stops responding to SSH after some hours powered to determine that sshd is not dying.
  • Tried adding ServerAliveInterval 60 ServerAliveCountMax 10 to /etc/ssh/ssh_config and restarting sshd. No change.
  • Looked in /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages for ssh errors. Didn't see anything.
  • Tried connecting using ssh -v -v -v raspeberrypi.lan didn't see anything unusual (much as I suspected, since I was connecting correctly).
  • Ran journalctl -u ssh -- I probably need to go a bit farther down this path, because I was tired when I tried it, and didn't think to nohup it and redirect to a file.
Barton Chittenden
  • 101
  • 2

1 Answers1

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I actually found a clue/work-around while writing up the question.

The ping that was keeping things alive was returning ipv6 packets:

$ ping raspberrypi.lan
PING raspberrypi.lan(raspberrypi.lan (2607:fb90:2c88:43b2:b04c:80cb:0:167)) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from raspberrypi.lan (2607:fb90:2c88:43b2:b04c:80cb:0:167): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=5.61 ms
64 bytes from raspberrypi.lan (2607:fb90:2c88:43b2:b04c:80cb:0:167): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=11.4 ms
64 bytes from raspberrypi.lan (2607:fb90:2c88:43b2:b04c:80cb:0:167): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=67.9 ms
64 bytes from raspberrypi.lan (2607:fb90:2c88:43b2:b04c:80cb:0:167): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=78.5 ms
...

I tried adding AddressFamily=inet6 to ~/.ssh/config:

Host raspberrypi
    User barton
    Hostname raspberrypi.lan
    ServerAliveInterval=60
    ServerAliveCountMax=10
    AddressFamily=inet6

... this didn't work, but when I changed it to AddressFamily=inet -- forcing traffic over IPV4 -- I was able to connect without pinging raspberrypi.lan.

I think that the ipv6 network is timing out somehow, and the ping is keeping it alive, but the ipv4 network is staying alive. It's still a mystery, but at least I have a workaround that doesn't involve setting up a ping in parallel to my ssh session.

Barton Chittenden
  • 101
  • 2