[mdlug] Mint 6, SSH and disconnects

[Joseph C. Bender]

dw at maserator.com wrote:
> <SNIP> ...or  3) your device (router in your case)is not connected to the
> modem when the IP lease expires and the DHCP Server needs to assign
> someone else an IP address in your area.
> 

Or, 4) in WideOpenWest's case, their DHCP server actually honors DHCP 
RELEASE and throws your IP back into the pool.  When your client 
actually does a DHCP REQUEST back at the server, it gets the next 
available IP.  Which probably won't be the one you just released.

Cisco devices tend to do this which is how I know it happens.

They will actually assign static IP addresses, of a sort, where they'll 
record your MAC and put in a DHCP reservation.  This will run you 
something like $10/month/IP.

Anyways, to the OP:

I'm currently sitting on WideOpenWest.  I generally keep OpenSSH and 
PuTTY sessions alive for days at a time to other boxes.  The only time 
they drop is when they do something stupid with their routing tables 
(which much to my everlasting dismay is quite often) during their 
overnight maintenance window.

As for your issue, it *really* sounds like something is dropping the 
network link on your workstation.  It could be that NetworkManager is 
being stupid (very very common), a bad NIC kernel module, a bad NIC, bad 
cabling, or the switchport you're plugging into is acting up.  It really 
seems like something is making that NIC disconnect from the network, 
which causes your connections to drop.

I'd launch a shell and run something like a "dmesg | grep eth" and see 
if you're seeing the ethernet interface going up and down, and/or your 
any driver errors that trip a kernel message for the interface. Rule 
things out one at a time until you're not getting the network manager 
error anymore.



-JCB