But the remote host can limit your ServerAliveInterval, however most hosts don't close your session if there is something running. On our clusters this is the only working solution, and I tried both, trust me.
If that's an issue (I've never met a server like that, not to mention one like that and I couldn't change the setting) then wouldn't you rather use this?
while [ true ]; do sleep 1000; done
Just using:
sleep 1000; exit
means you can't make new connections after 17 minutes.
Yes, in fact I use the first one (while true; sleep; ls) but I thought the second is more succint. Anyone interested can make a loop. Please notice that most of the snippets aren't meant to be copied & pasted, but rather analyzed and understood by the user.
Ah, sometimes that's a hard line to draw since often the people that know enough to understand not to take it literally don't really need the pointer in the first place. :)