How do I configure configure keepalive on Centos7

Question

How and where do I configure configure TCP keepalive on CentOS 7?

My attempts to find it:

[michael@devserver ~]$ cat /etc/sysctl.conf
# sysctl settings are defined through files in
# /usr/lib/sysctl.d/, /run/sysctl.d/, and /etc/sysctl.d/.
#
# Vendors settings live in /usr/lib/sysctl.d/.
# To override a whole file, create a new file with the same in
# /etc/sysctl.d/ and put new settings there. To override
# only specific settings, add a file with a lexically later
# name in /etc/sysctl.d/ and put new settings there.
#
# For more information, see sysctl.conf(5) and sysctl.d(5).
[michael@devserver ~]$ cat /usr/lib/sysctl.d/* | grep keep
[michael@devserver ~]$ cat /run/sysctl.d/* | grep keep
cat: /run/sysctl.d/*: No such file or directory
[michael@devserver ~]$ cat /etc/sysctl.d/* | grep keep
[michael@devserver ~]$ cat /usr/lib/sysctl.d/* | grep keep
[michael@devserver ~]$ ls /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ | grep tcp_keep
tcp_keepalive_intvl
tcp_keepalive_probes
tcp_keepalive_time
[michael@devserver ~]$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keep*
75
9
7200
[michael@devserver ~]$ whereis tcp_keepalive
tcp_keepalive:[michael@devserver ~]$ whereis tcp_keepalived
tcp_keepalived:[michael@devserver ~]$ whereis keepalive
keepalive:[michael@devserver ~]$ whereis keepalived
keepalived:[michael@devserver ~]$ ls /etc | grep keep
[michael@greenbeantech ~]$

Answer 1

The TCP Keepalive HOWTO refers to two methods for configuring TCP keepalives:

• the procfs interface

• the sysctl interface

As you already found, you can update the values by writing a new number to the corresponding /proc file, for example:

echo 600 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_time

or via sysctl:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time=600

... although neither of those changes survive a reboot.

To make the change persist across reboots, you want to place the values in (or via) /etc/sysctl.conf. I don't have a CentOS system in front of me, but it's possible that /etc/sysctl.conf is linked to from a file in /etc/sysctl.d/.

My recommendation would be to create a file in /etc/sysctl.d/ with contents in the format:

net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time=7200
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl=75
net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes=9

The sysctl files are read in numeric order, so if you want your values to take precedence, heed the warning you already saw:

To override only specific settings, add a file with a lexically later name in /etc/sysctl.d/ and put new settings there.