Keeping the browser terminal session connected

[robi]

Many times there is a need to keep multiple browser terminal sessions open across different apps and systems and the information from one is necessary for the other.

However it's super frustrating when some timeout happens and reloads the terminal w/o warning. This results in a loss of all the accumulated information in that session and requires a long redo process.

How do we prevent the websockets from timing out?
Why isn't there a keepalive?

Can we improve the reconnect as a keepalive instead?

[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.