SSH escape sequences

September 4th, 2010

Such as telnet the SSH protocol also has a control character, it’s the tilde (~).

If you for example want to kill a hanging SSH session just type ~. . With ~^Z you can suspend a running session and get back to your local machine. To reactivate it just type fg (yes, the SSH session is also just a job). All supported escape sequences will be listed with ~? :

me@remote ~ % ~?
Supported escape sequences:
  ~.  - terminate connection (and any multiplexed sessions)
  ~B  - send a BREAK to the remote system
  ~C  - open a command line
  ~R  - Request rekey (SSH protocol 2 only)
  ~^Z - suspend ssh
  ~#  - list forwarded connections
  ~&  - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate)
  ~?  - this message
  ~~  - send the escape character by typing it twice
(Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)

All sequences are of course only understood after a newline ;)

Martin Scharm

stuff. just for the records.

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SSH escape sequences

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Martin Scharm

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