ssh disconnects when starting gkrellm

When using ssh to connect to FreeBSD 11.0 the link will occasionally shut down with the following in /var/log/messages

Aug 23 14:45:11 karen sshd[62451]: fatal: Fssh_packet_write_poll: Connection from 174.77.777.77 port 57670: Permission denied

If no program is running in the shell, the link is stable and will remain connected for days. Sufficiently complex man pages, for instance, will cause the link to die when paging. For instance, pw() with the most pager will do it. Running emacs is dicey at best, but gkrellm will always cause the link to die immediately. While a simple X11 app, such as xeyes, is stable. sshfs is also unstable and disconnects after it experiences a few directory listings. In each case, some I/O precipitates the disconnect.
 
Try decreasing the MTU value, e.g.:
Code:
# ifconfig wlan0 mtu 1400
I've seen such behavior caused by wrong MTU. SSH doesn't like fragmented packets. By default MTU is 1500, check your modem configuration, e.g. my DSL modem uses MTU=1492.
 
First off, thank you so so so much for responding. I poked at the two modems to see what their MTUs were. One is a CenturyLink ZyXEL PK5001Z, and I found it's MTU. Modem Status ==> Internet Status ==> MTU Size: 1492 MSS Size:1452 The other is a ARRIS TG1682, and I couldn't find it's MTU. Neither seems to provide a way of increasing it by 8, so I changed the MTU on both ends. Saddly the symptoms did not change. At least I'll have less fragmentation now.

Code:
sudo ifconfig wlp3s0 mtu 1400  #linux box
sudo ifconfig igb0 mtu 1400    #server

The error message says it's trying to make a connection on a high numbered port, so I tried forwarding a large swath of high numbered ports to the server from the modem. Hey, it worked for mosh. It didn't work here though. I'd like to know why it says "Permission denied", who is denying and why? It almost sounds like something on the server its self.

The mosh link works and is stable. So the terminal things which die in ssh are ok in mosh. Unfortunately, mosh seems to scramble command sequences and C-BkSp C-S-+ C-S-- C-S-number (at least) don't make it through to emacs. Plus mosh has no facility to transfer files, or for X11. Though I can see how it might be possible to extend mosh to do X11. You'd need to write a moshX-client that could handle fixing erroneous screen update guesses (like mosh-client), a sort of better-vnc. So I still need to fix ssh.
 
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