Cursor remote SSH issue

Describe the Bug

As described in previous bugs, I have been facing issues with remote SSH connection.

Tried upgrading to anysphere SSH, but the same issue persists. The integrated terminal hangs after a minute. Unsure on how to proceed, as I am unable to use cursor at all. Have tried stopping code indexing, killing the running cursor servers (fork bombing issue), deleted old chats, but nothing works.

In vscode, it works perfectly fine. Switching to vs till this issue gets resolved.

Steps to Reproduce

  • setup remote SSH with any server.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.1.2 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.96.2
Commit: 87ea1604be1f602f173c5fb67582e647fcef6c40
Date: 2025-06-13T00:26:52.696Z (2 days ago)
Electron: 34.5.1
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.0
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.5.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

1 Like

Hi @aashay96, could you share the output from this command?

Also, could you try running htop on your remote system when connected over SSH via Cursor? Would be helpful to know if the CPU or memory is getting pegged.

This is how HTOP looks -

Roundtrip latency: 1.050ms
Up: 9638.6 Mbps
Down: 5633.8 Mbps

Our team is currently struggling to use cursor due to this issue.

It looks like there are a bunch of zombie processes. Could you try running killall node in your remote machine?

In addition, I’d recommend switch to the Anysphere Remote SSH extension – I’ve run into a similar issue where the VScode one can leave behind zombie processes.

I have tried deleting these processes. As soon as I connect with cursor, they respawn.

I am already using anysphere remote ssh extension as mentioned earlier.

@ravirahman Anything else that can be tried?

Hi @aashay96,

From the screenshot, it looks like some processes from the VSCode extension are still running. That extension installs into ~/.cursor-server/cli/server/Stable-XXXX (the Anysphere extension installs into a different directory).

Could you try rebooting the remote server to forcefully kill the processes? It looks like they are consuming significant CPU & RAM which would cause the server to hang and make Cursor unresponsive.

that is because I have started to use vscode instead of cursor. I can assure atleast this isn’t the blocker for cursor and the VM is extremely large (a few weeks ago, 50+ people where using this as login node and cursor was working absolutely fine).

This is a cursor SSH issue.

I have killed all cursor processes - retried, but the issue persists.

Hi @aashay96, processes marked with ‘D’ are in an uninterruptible sleep state. In this state, they will not respond to killall (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/767551/how-to-stop-uninterruptible-process-on-linux). Even after switching to the Anysphere extension, these processes would be left behind by the VSCode one. I think killing them would require a hard reboot.

Another thing to check would be to see if any extensions are causing Cursor to hang. You can use the extension bisect tool to try to pinpoint what might be problematic. To access it, open the command palette (cmd/ctrl-shift-p) and then select “Help: Start Extension Bisect”

I have created another VM. Same issue persists.

@ravirahman Retried the whole setup - new node, reinstalled the anysphere SSH. The connection still drops after a minute.

@ravirahman Could you please help? I want to get back to using cursor, but it isn’t working.

Hi @aashay96, were you able to try the extension bisect, or did it crash before that was able to complete?

Another thing to check is the Extension Host Latency – theme’s a “Measure Extension Host Latency” command in the command palette.

Re:

The connection still drops after a minute.

How does this manifest? Does it prompt you to reload the window, or does it hang? (And if it hangs, is it the entire window, or just terminal / file operations?)

In addition, could you share the logs from the “Remote - SSH” output window.
Thanks!

@ravirahman can you check? Still stuck on this.

Hi @aashay96, took a look at the logs and don’t see anything that indicates why the connections keep on dropping. It is suspicious of the (nearly) 5 minute timeout between connections #1 and #2; the server has a 5 minute timeout where it will disconnect on inactivity.

Which version of the SSH extension are you on? I’d recommend upgrading to the latest (which is currently 1.0.13). There was a bug with timeouts in version 1.0.6 that was since fixed.

Could you run the “Generate Connection Report” command and share the output for that? Please make sure to redact any sensitive info before sharing.

Here is the log.
logs_ssh.txt (11.7 KB)

I am already on the latest version (auto-updated yesterday). If possible could we do a debug session with the support team, this is right now a team wide problem.

I’ve been waiting to see other reports of this. Cursor spawns endless node processes until the host runs out of memory and crashes. Any fix yet?

Hi @UnluckyForSome, could you confirm when extension, and which version, that you’re on?

We’ve seen the endless node processes with the VSCode SSH extension. Wondering if you’ve tried the Anysphere one? In addition, it’d be helpful if you could share the logs from the “Remote - SSH” output so I can take a look at what might be happening. Thanks!