We press ALT+F1 and got:
Mistakenly, I thought that greyed timeouts mean that timeout is disabled but that's not true!
We checked the timeouts using ssh:
# esxcli system settings advanced list -o /UserVars/ESXiShellTimeOut
Path: /UserVars/ESXiShellTimeOut
Type: integer
Int Value: 1
Default Int Value: 0
Min Value: 0
Max Value: 86400
String Value:
Default String Value:
Valid Characters:
Description: Time before automatically disabling local and remote shell access (in seconds, 0 disables). Takes effect after the services are restarted.
The timeout value was incorrectly set to 1 what is 1 second - our ESXi Shell was enabled but timed out after one second :)
It seems that during customizing the ESXi host using e.g. PowerCLI the value '1' was set instead of '0' to disable timeouts.
So, why the timeout is greyed out? I found explanation in this VMware KB:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2004746
Long story short this is ESXi Shell default behavior - timeout are grayed out as long as ESXi Shell is Enabled or SSH is enabled or both !
Disabling ESXi Shell and SSH - enable the timeouts modification:
the end.
