Issue with remote ssh

[Ashish_Varma]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

I am observing this since today (02/09/2026) most likely after the update.
My ssh connection to remote server is getting timed out on installation of cursor-server on the remote linux machine.

The issue is happening because of long time taken on the remote machine which has NFS mounted drives and takes >30 seconds to untar the tar file needed to run cursor-server.

Earnest request to increase it to much higher value like 180 seconds or better make it configurable.

Also, on every try, it cleans up the .cursor-server directory. cursor-agent suspects there is problem in the shell script “cursor_remote_install_51fb63fe-fe14-4e94-8fc5-54276a6da30e.sh” in the condition:
‘true’ == “true”

This does not look right.

if [[ ‘true’ == “true” ]]; then
echo “Removing all existing Cursor installations”
rm -rf “$SERVER_DATA_DIR/bin” “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..code.log “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..code.pid “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..code.token “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..multiplex.pid “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..multiplex.token “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..multiplex.log “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..pid “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/..token “$SERVER_DATA_DIR”/.*.log “$(get_lockfile)” “$(get_lockfile).target” “$(get_tmp_file ‘code.log’)” “$(get_tmp_file ‘code.pid’)” “$(get_tmp_file ‘code.token’)” “$(get_tmp_file_with_hash ‘multiplex.log’ ‘3ce73d09cffc8f33c6d911e972bd0f6dabbe3e26e810844be8060e6b10987db8’)” “$(get_tmp_file_with_hash ‘multiplex.pid’ ‘3ce73d09cffc8f33c6d911e972bd0f6dabbe3e26e810844be8060e6b10987db8’)” “$(get_tmp_file_with_hash ‘multiplex.token’ ‘3ce73d09cffc8f33c6d911e972bd0f6dabbe3e26e810844be8060e6b10987db8’)”

# Don't delete the server we just copied
echo "Deleting left behind cursor servers, except for $HOME/.cursor-server/cursor-server-b776e84c-8c06-4f08-87c3-0d30b22fa147.tar.gz"
find "$SERVER_DATA_DIR" -name "cursor-server-*.tar.gz" ! -name "$(basename '$HOME/.cursor-server/cursor-server-b776e84c-8c06-4f08-87c3-0d30b22fa147.tar.gz')" -delete -print
echo "Done deleting left behind cursor servers"

fi

Steps to Reproduce

Have a remote ssh server which has slow disk, where tar would take longer than 30s to untar, and attempt to connect to that ssh server from laptop.

I have mac laptop and linux backend.

Operating System

MacOS
Linux

Version Information

Version: 2.4.31 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 3578107fdf149b00059ddad37048220e41681000
Date: 2026-02-08T07:42:24.999Z (1 day ago)
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

For AI issues: which model did you use?

claude opus 4.5

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the detailed report.

The team’s aware. Your report helps with prioritization, especially the NFS-related part.

In the meantime, there are two workarounds:

1. Increase the SSH connection timeout, add this to Cursor Settings (JSON):

   "remote.SSH.connectTimeout": 180
   

2. If everything is stuck, manually clean up and reconnect on the remote host:

   pkill -f .cursor-server
   rm -rf ~/.cursor-server /tmp/cursor-remote-lock.* /tmp/cursor-server-*.tar.gz
   

Increasing the timeout should help you connect even if unpacking is slow on NFS, but it won’t fix the unnecessary reinstall on every attempt. That’s the script bug you found.

Let me know if increasing the timeout helps you get unstuck for now.

[Ashish_Varma]

@deanrie

• Increase the SSH connection timeout, add this to Cursor Settings (JSON):

"remote.SSH.connectTimeout": 180

Thanks for the quick response. The increase in the timeout value worked!

Here are the steps for reference:

On your Mac, run:
nano ~/Library/Application\ Support/Cursor/User/settings.json

using TextEdit:
open -a TextEdit ~/Library/Application\ Support/Cursor/User/settings.json

with VS Code (if installed):
code ~/Library/Application\ Support/Cursor/User/settings.json

Add the line “remote.SSH.connectTimeout”: 180 before the closing brace, making sure to add a comma after the previous line:

Save the file, then restart Cursor and try connecting again.

[Colin]

Hey there!

This was resolved in v1.0.44 of the Remote SSH Extension!