Enabling ServerAliveInterval by default

[Philip]

On Monday 17 December 2007 11:15:06 William Ahern wrote:
> I would hope that you also made a pass at trying to convince them [not to 
use evil stuff]

In the position where I mainly encountered such problems, we had to consider:
- language barriers - I only speak English, which makes it hard for me to 
communicate the issue
- political issues - inter-departmental, vendor/purchaser, international
- "face" issues - senior admins often don't take kindly to some foreigner 
telling them how to do their jobs
- competence issues - often, Windows admins have had Unix boxes foisted on 
them with little or no training
- type of network connection - the admins are usually on the same LAN as the 
SSH hosts, so they never see the problem themselves

I agree, we should try to get everyone to do The Right Thing, but sometimes it 
just isn't going to happen. Sensible defaults are useful in such cases 
(defining "sensible" is going to be the problem here, I suspect).

On the bright side: I don't do that job any more.

Regards, Philip.