mayooot Cursor Remote SSH: Connection Fix
Overview
When Cursor connects to a remote server via SSH, it installs a cursor-server binary on the remote machine and locks a file during installation. If a previous session crashed or disconnected ungracefully, the lock file is left behind with a stale owner PID. New connection attempts keep waiting for the lock and eventually fail with:
Could not acquire lock after multiple attempts
disconnectReason: 'lock_acquisition_failed'
Step 1 — Get the user's Cursor version info
Ask the user to open Cursor locally and go to Help → About, then share the output. You need:
- Commit hash (e.g.
0cf8b06883f54e26bb4f0fb8647c9500ccb43310) — this is the remote server version to install - OS (e.g.
Darwin arm64) — tells you the user's local OS, but the remote server binary must match the remote machine's OS/arch
Example output to look for:
Version: 3.x.x
Commit: 0cf8b06883f54e26bb4f0fb8647c9500ccb43310
OS: Darwin arm64 ...
The Commit hash is what matters. The user's local OS does NOT affect which server binary to download — always match the remote machine.
Step 2 — Kill the stale lock on the remote machine
Have the user SSH into the remote machine and run:
# Find and kill any lingering cursor-server processes
pkill -f cursor-server
# Remove the stale lock file (TMP_DIR is usually /run/user/<uid>)
rm -f /run/user/$(id -u)/cursor-remote-lock.*
Then retry connecting from Cursor. If it connects now, you're done.
If it still fails (e.g. the server binary is missing or corrupt), continue to Step 3.
Step 3 — Manually install the cursor-server binary
Determine the remote platform
| Remote OS | Remote Arch | Use this suffix |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | x86_64 | linux-x64 |
| Linux | arm64 | linux-arm64 |
| macOS | x86_64 | darwin-x64 |
| macOS | arm64 | darwin-arm64 |
Check on the remote machine if unsure:
uname -s # Linux or Darwin
uname -m # x86_64 or aarch64/arm64
Download URL pattern
https://cursor.blob.core.windows.net/remote-releases/<COMMIT>/vscode-reh-<PLATFORM>.tar.gz
Example for Linux x64 with commit 0cf8b06...:
https://cursor.blob.core.windows.net/remote-releases/0cf8b06883f54e26bb4f0fb8647c9500ccb43310/vscode-reh-linux-x64.tar.gz
Option A — Remote machine has internet access (preferred)
Run on the remote machine:
COMMIT=<paste commit hash here>
PLATFORM=linux-x64 # change if needed
# Download
curl -L "https://cursor.blob.core.windows.net/remote-releases/${COMMIT}/vscode-reh-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz" \
-o /tmp/cursor-server.tar.gz
# Create target directory
mkdir -p ~/.cursor-server/bin/${PLATFORM}/${COMMIT}
# Extract
tar -xzf /tmp/cursor-server.tar.gz \
-C ~/.cursor-server/bin/${PLATFORM}/${COMMIT} \
--strip-components=1
# Verify
~/.cursor-server/bin/${PLATFORM}/${COMMIT}/node --version
A node version printed (e.g. v20.18.2) means success.
Option B — Remote machine has no internet access
Run on the local machine first:
COMMIT=<paste commit hash here>
PLATFORM=linux-x64 # match the REMOTE machine, not local
curl -L "https://cursor.blob.core.windows.net/remote-releases/${COMMIT}/vscode-reh-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz" \
-o ~/cursor-server.tar.gz
# Transfer to remote (replace 'zagreus' with your SSH host alias)
scp ~/cursor-server.tar.gz zagreus:/tmp/cursor-server.tar.gz
Then SSH in and run the extract + verify steps from Option A.
Step 4 — Clear the lock and reconnect
After the binary is in place, back on the remote machine:
rm -f /run/user/$(id -u)/cursor-remote-lock.*
pkill -f cursor-server
Then reconnect from Cursor on the local machine. It should find the pre-installed binary and skip the download entirely.
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
Downloading cursor-linux-x64.tar.gz instead of vscode-reh-linux-x64.tar.gz |
The correct package name is vscode-reh-<platform> |
| Using local OS to pick the download platform | Always match the remote machine's OS/arch |
| Forgetting to delete the lock file after killing the process | Always rm -f the lock after pkill |
| Curl returns 215 bytes (XML error page) | Wrong URL — double-check the commit hash and platform suffix |
Quick reference: full one-liner for Linux x64
COMMIT=0cf8b06883f54e26bb4f0fb8647c9500ccb43310 && \
PLATFORM=linux-x64 && \
pkill -f cursor-server; \
rm -f /run/user/$(id -u)/cursor-remote-lock.*; \
curl -L "https://cursor.blob.core.windows.net/remote-releases/${COMMIT}/vscode-reh-${PLATFORM}.tar.gz" -o /tmp/cursor-server.tar.gz && \
mkdir -p ~/.cursor-server/bin/${PLATFORM}/${COMMIT} && \
tar -xzf /tmp/cursor-server.tar.gz -C ~/.cursor-server/bin/${PLATFORM}/${COMMIT} --strip-components=1 && \
~/.cursor-server/bin/${PLATFORM}/${COMMIT}/node --version