Paramiko and exec_command - killing remote process?

Question

I\'m using Paramiko to tail -f a file on a remote server.

Previously, we were running this via ssh -t, but that proved flaky, and the

Answer 1

You should use ssh keepalives... the problem you have is that the remote shell has no way of knowing (by default) that your ssh session was killed. Keepalives will enable the remote shell to detect that you killed the session

client = paramiko.SSHClient()
client.load_system_host_keys()
client.connect('someserver', username='victorhooi', password='blahblah')
transport = client.get_transport()
transport.set_keepalive(1)   # <------------------------------
# ... carry on as usual...

Set the keepalive value as low as you like (even 1 second)... after several seconds, the remote shell will see that the ssh login died, and it will terminate any processes that were spawned by it.