Keeping xterm terminal alive on crunchbang linux debian wheezy

Question

I like to keep a number of terminals open at different locations on my development VM. For this I use terminator because I got a big screen and I can divide the terminals anyway I want.

But after some time these terminals close one after another. I don't use ssh so any keepalive options would not work.

Is there any place where I can configure the terminal so that it does not timeout or close?

I am using GNU bash, version 4.2.37 as shell and terminator on 'xterm`

Answer 1

What you describe is not the default behavior. The only way I can think of this happening is if you have set the TMOUT variable to something. From man bash:

   TMOUT  If set to a value greater than zero, TMOUT  is  treated  as  the
          default timeout for the read builtin.  The select command termi‐
          nates if input does not arrive after TMOUT seconds when input is
          coming  from  a terminal.  In an interactive shell, the value is
          interpreted as the number of seconds to  wait  for  input  after
          issuing  the  primary prompt.  Bash terminates after waiting for
          that number of seconds if input does not arrive.

In other words, bash will exit automatically in $TMOUT seconds.

So, you need to search for the file where that variable is set and unset it. This is probably going to be in your $HOME/.bashrc file but to be on the safe side, run this command which will search all possible config files for TMOUT:

for f in  ~/.bashrc ~/.profile ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_login \
         /etc/profile /etc/environment /etc/bash.bashrc; 
do 
  [ -e $f ] && grep -H TMOUT $f; 
done

That should return a line like

/home/terdon/.bashrc:TMOUT=600

Delete that line from the relevant file and you're set.

Answer 2

Maybe you are disconnected somewhere in the infra.

Open an extra xterm window, and enter

while [ 1 ]; do   /usr/ucb/echo -n .; sleep 40; done

You will get a dot every 40 seconds and enter ^C when you're finished.