Keeping the browser terminal session connected

[nebulon]

I can't find an obvious explicit timeout, maybe the browser suspends the tab or so? How long a timeout are we roughly talking about and does this also happen if you use the cloudron cli tool to open a terminal into the app? Will keep some terminal tabs open to see if I can reproduce this easily, so far I haven't at least noticed it.

[robi]

I ran a script to time it and output the date command to a file every second.

It started and finished with these two entries:

Wed Dec 25 23:14:07 UTC 2024
...
Wed Dec 25 23:21:12 UTC 2024

The tab did not go to sleep.

[nebulon]

oh, my terminal tabs are still up, just left them there since my last post here. So looks like something else is interfering here then and closing the socket. I have only tested on firefox here though.

[robi]

It's odd, I just tried it in Brave (the previous was in Iron) and it lasted a lot longer:

Thu Dec 26 00:22:16 UTC 2024
...
Thu Dec 26 00:36:05 UTC 2024

[Kubernetes]

You should use tmux or gnu screen for that use case

https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html
https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki

I prefer tmux myself.

Ah, sorry, you are talking about the browser shells only?

[necrevistonnezr]

Yes, I believe he is and I‘ve noticed the same annoyance a couple of times. I think it depends on your specific browser and how it handles power management.

[robi]

@Kubernetes TY, I made it clearer in the OP.

@necrevistonnezr Thanks for the hint. I am trying out the Staying Alive extension to see if it does the trick for the domain or just the terminal sessions.

[robi]

No go so far with the extension.

Console log shows:

Uncaught Error: Could not dispose an addon that has not been loaded
    at Proxy._wrappedAddonDispose (terminal-BYZevxTX.js:8:31585)
    at l.dispose (terminal-BYZevxTX.js:8:31403)
    at WebSocket.<anonymous> (terminal-BYZevxTX.js:9:1319)
terminal-BYZevxTX.js:9 Socket closed. Reconnecting...
cs.js:65 

[nebulon]

Do you happen to have anything like Cloudflare proxy in front of your system? Maybe that gets into the way?

[robi]

@nebulon No, CF is DNS only.

[nebulon]

Then I am out of ideas without further error details, something seems to pause/disconnect the websocket connection.

[robi]

Not sure what else to provide other than flip the script and revisit the OP asking what can we do to make the browser keep thinking it's alive? Send NOOPs?

[fbartels]

Do other solutions, like for example guacamole suffer from the same issue?

I think i am personally leaning towards using the cloudron cli, as this way I can use tmux for persistence and can even share the session. I had tabs crashing because too much memory was used and a reload will always start a new session.

[corsacca]

Using worpdress managed app, after ~90 seconds of inactivity the terminal resets and shows "Reconnecting..." and then the first line.
I can be trying to write a mysql query and loose all progress.
I'd love a solution to keep the session live.

[nebulon]

@corsacca since we have no timeouts on our side, do you have any proxying services or something in front of your Cloudron, which may terminate the connection on inactivity?

[corsacca]

Sorry, i should have checked that first.
Downgrading CF proxy to DNS only does seem to fix the issue for me.
Thanks @nebulon.