Mender Troubleshooting Addon: Remote Terminal has unstable connection in certain situations

General Discussions
1

Hi,

in general the remote terminal works fine for most of our devices in different situations after configuring the mender-connect.conf . However, we have situations where the target device and the machine we are connecting from have slow internet connection (~5mbit/s up down). In those cases, the mender remote terminal often loses connection and closes. In the best case, we can reestablish immediately the connection. In other cases, the “connect terminal” button appears but the terminal stays blank for some time. (Same with the mender-cli)

We try to avoid these scenarios but maybe someone has some ideas.

Thanks!


{
  "ShellCommand": "/bin/bash",
  "User": "nobody",
  "ReconnectIntervalSeconds": 30,
  "Sessions": {
    "StopExpired": true,
    "ExpireAfter": 7200,
    "ExpireAfterIdle": 600,
    "MaxPerUser": 1
  },
  "HealthCheckEnabled": true,
  "HealthCheckIntervalSeconds": 30
}
2

Are you running over cellular network? If so are you logging connectivity stats RSRQ etc, and disconnects?

I’ve been using the terminal on a number of devices deployed in rural locations with poor 4G coverage. I mostly use mender-cli terminal. It’s been working as well as can be expected over a poor connection.

I don’t have much to add. I’m posting because I’m also curious to hear on other peoples experiences here. Our business absolutely needs to support connectivity over poor signals.

3

Yes, the device is connected to the cellular network. I was not logging on this level.

In fact, I get the issue using the remote terminal from my laptop with a good internet connection to mender as well (but ofc the target device itself having poor connection). Input to the terminal becomes laggy and sometimes the connection gets closed.

Thanks for you reply and sharing your experience.