git commandline tools hang for 10 min 'til timeout - what can I do?

Question

Hey team - starting a few days ago, I'm experiencing two issues with Bitbucket that may be related:

* My web UI session to Bitbucket times out, and I have to log in again. Once logged back in, everything works fine, and I have normal access to repository content and function. This timeout behavior is new and unusual - seems my session stayed active with my browser across many days in the past. We do have Bitbucket behind a VPN, and I have verified that I can't even get to the site without VPN, but then it works fine after logging into the VPN. Again, the timeout is the issue.
* I'm unable to "git pull" or "git push" at all. After issuing the commands, my commandline just hangs...for 10 minutes 'til it times out and I get an error like this:

"Received disconnect from port User session has timed out idling after 600000 ms Disconnected fatal: Could not read from remote repository Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists."

I've already tried rebooting (Mac; all current updates). I tried a new SSH key.

I'm not aware of any config changes at the Bitbucket server end, nor to my laptop, and my IT dept is stumped at the moment. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Help, please? Thanks in-advance!

Stephen Sifers · Answer

Hello again Ben.

Thanks for the update and further information. It's unfortunate we're unable to find the root cause or resolve the issue currently. Very happy to hear you have a workaround that allows you to stay productive.

As you said, once you have some time to get back to this please let us know. Just a heads up, we'll most likely need to work with your server admin/Bitbucket admin to get some logs from the server to find the cause of this.

Regards,
Stephen Sifers

Ben Uphoff · Answer

Hi Stephen. Thanks for the response. I never did get to the root of this issue, even with copious help from our networking and security team. And no one else on our team is experiencing these issues with Bitbucket. I found a viable workaround, however - switched over to using the HTTPS connection rather than SSH. There's so much going on at present, I'm likely to just stick with the HTTPS connection. BTW, the article's suggestions were not fruitful for me. The connectivity definitely does not have anything to do with data volume or network performance. I will certainly update this thread if I need to truly resolve the matter however.

Thanks again, and regards, Ben

Stephen Sifers · Answer

Hello Ben and welcome to the Community!

Thank you for providing great detail into the issue you’re having with Bitbucket session timeouts and your error when attempting git commands.

Firstly, the default timeout within Bitbucket is 30 minutes. This timeout window is customizable and can be adjusted to whichever allotment suits your requirements. You may find how to change this session timeout on the Bitbucket server side at How do I change the default session timeout.

Second, the error you’re reporting from the Bitbucket server when you attempt git commands is referenced within an article which may help to resolve the issue. You may find this article at Git push over SSH - User session has timed out idling after 600000 ms. The steps within that article should help with increasing the timeout/alive interval which should help to keep your git commands from timing out.

If you’re still having issues with timeouts, please attempt a git status and let us know the results. Along with attempting to ping the hostname/DNS of your Bitbucket server when the timeouts are occurring.

Regards,
Stephen Sifers