figured out a long time ago that having inline comments on the same line as configuration settings causes ssh to blow up with a parse error and I forgot to include it
ServerAliveInterval 30 # timeout in seconds after which if no data has been recieved from the server, ssh will send a keep alive message
ServerAliveCountMax 120 # the number of times to send a keep alive message in a row, only applies to ssh v2
VisualHostKey yes #Shows the ssh key image on connection. YES or NO
Compression no #if the connection should compress. YES or NO
PasswordAuthentication yes #If ssh should use password auth. YES or NO
PreferredAuthentications publickey #allows ssh to prefer one method of auth over another if there are multiple methods available. gssapi-with-mic, hostbased, publickey, keyboard-interactive, password
TCPKeepAlive yes #send TCP keep alive messages to the host, which lets us know if the connection dies, but it can give false negatives (if the connection goes down temporarily, you'll get disconnected). YES, NO
# verbosity used when logging messages from ssh, QUIET, FATAL, ERROR, INFO, VERBOSE, DEBUG, DEBUG1, DEBUG2, DEBUG3
LogLevel INFO
# if YES, never auto add host keyes and refuses to connecto to hosts that have changed. YES, NO, ASK
StrictHostKeyChecking ask
# known hosts file database location
UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts
# timeout in seconds after which if no data has been recieved from the server, ssh will send a keep alive message
ServerAliveInterval 30
# the number of times to send a keep alive message in a row, only applies to ssh v2
ServerAliveCountMax 120
# Shows the ssh key image on connection. YES or NO
VisualHostKey yes
# if the connection should use compression. YES or NO
Compression yes
# If ssh should use password auth. YES or NO
PasswordAuthentication yes
# allows ssh to prefer one method of auth over another if there are multiple methods available. gssapi-with-mic, hostbased, publickey, keyboard-interactive, password
PreferredAuthentications publickey
# send TCP keep alive messages to the host, which lets us know if the connection dies, but it can give false negatives (if the connection goes down temporarily, you'll get disconnected). YES, NO
TCPKeepAlive yes
# refer to: https://github.com/FiloSottile/whosthere/blob/master/README.md