If you use VPN to connect to Minerva and experience a frequent drop of your ssh connections, you may use following ssh configurations to keep your ssh session alive:
On your own computer (not Minerva), edit the ~/.ssh/config file:
Host minerva
Hostname minerva.hpc.mssm.edu
ServerAliveInterval 240
ServerAliveCountMax 2
With this configuration, the SSH client sends a packet to the server every 240 seconds (4 minutes) to keep the connection alive. If the client does not receive a response after two tries (as specified by the ServerAliveCountMax setting), it closes the connection.
We also recommend you use a screen session or tmux so that you can return to your work after the drop of the connection.
Warning: When you use VPN, data transfer from Minerva to your own computer will be extremely slow and it will also cause network congestions for other users. We recommend you use globus for this situation which bypasses the VPN.