How I Fixed My Anysphere Remote SSH Failures in Cursor IDE

I was excited to use Cursor IDE for remote development, but my Anysphere Remote SSH setup kept failing with cryptic errors. Unlike my smooth experience in VSCode, I couldn’t connect to my Ubuntu server, and the logs pointed to server installation issues. After days of troubleshooting, I cracked the code—here’s my journey and the steps that finally worked.

The Frustrating Initial Error

Every attempt to connect via SSH resulted in the same error: “Failed to install the Cursor Server. Please check the logs for more details.” Digging into the logs, I saw messages like this:

debug1: Remote: /home/zwhy/.ssh/authorized_keys:1: key options: agent-forwarding port-forwarding pty user-rc x11-forwarding
bash: -c: line 0: unexpected end of file while looking for matching `''
bash: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

This indicated that the SSH command was getting truncated, likely due to overly long arguments passed from Windows. It was baffling because my network setup with proxies worked fine for other tools like curl.

My Diagnostic Process

To rule out environment issues, I tested on multiple Ubuntu 20.04 machines. All showed the same problem. I ran a key command to check argument limits:

getconf ARG_MAX

This returned 2097152, which should have been sufficient, but it confirmed the issue wasn’t with the remote system. I suspected the Anysphere plugin itself was mishandling the command string.

Implementing the Core Fix

After some research, I upgraded to version 1.0.6 of the Anysphere Remote SSH plugin. This was a game-changer—it changed how SSH commands are launched, avoiding long argument truncation. Here’s how I did it step by step:

• First, I uninstalled all Anysphere-related extensions to start fresh.
• Then, I manually installed the critical extensions in this exact order: ms-azuretools.vscode-docker, ms-vscode-remote.remote-containers, and ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh using their .vsix files to ensure compatibility.
• After upgrading the Anysphere Remote SSH to v1.0.6, my SSH connections started working without the server installation error.

Overcoming Remaining Hurdles

Even after the upgrade, I faced two pesky bugs. For the stale lockfile error during reconnections:

ln: Failed to create hard link '/run/user/1000/cursor-remote-lock.417ac7906b3030b015884b301a1c5a27': File already exists

I fixed it by manually deleting the lockfile or clicking “Reinstall Server” in Cursor. More importantly, I learned to use Anysphere’s Remote Containers extension exclusively—not Microsoft’s—for attaching to Docker containers. This resolved incompatibility issues and errors about missing files.

Final Success and Pro Tips

With the right extensions and versions, my setup stabilized. However, network delays with proxies in China caused slow connections during container attachment. To handle this:

• I ensured proxies were configured correctly both on the host and inside containers, using settings like HTTP_PROXY=http://127.0.0.1:7890.
• I stayed patient during slow steps, as the latest Anysphere Remote Containers extension now streams logs for progress visibility.

Now, remote development in Cursor is seamless. If you’re stuck, focus on plugin versions and network tweaks—it saved my workflow!