Thanks to folks at Panic.com for a speedy reply to my inquiry. I have had a problem for some time with a couple of FTP servers killing or timing out my connection. Where this gets to be a real headache was when editing ftp files through BBEdit or TextMate; if the connection timed out and I tried to save the file, half the time it would overwrite my file on the server with an empty file – which was really *not* good. Transmit back in the day had a preference that you could check to send a “tickle” to the server to make it think you were occupied, and thus not kick you off.
Transmit 3.5 or greater provides a similiar, albeit more hidden, functionality. To enable this keep-alive functionality:
- Go to the Transmit menu, hold down the Option key, and click Advanced preferences. You will see a list with only (Default) in it.
- Click the “+” to add a new server specific setting.
- Enter the offending kickoff server address in the address field, and check the checkbox “Keep connections alive during long transfers.”
This should do the trick. If you would rather create your own home-grown applescript version, the refresh command was recently added to the Applescript library for Transmit, which you can trigger by sending the session in question a “refresh list their stuff files” command in applescript. (perhaps more on that later)