Harvester UI · Reviewed

Admins can set the login session timeouts, and the UI says when it loses its connection

Today the only way to shorten a Harvester login session is the command line, and when the browser loses its live connection the UI keeps showing old VM states without a word. This change adds the two session timeouts to Settings and shows a "Disconnected" pill in the header while the connection is down.

To review PR 1178 ↗ Issue 11287 ↗

What changes for the user

Settings > UI gets two new entries: the session timeout (how long a login lasts) and the idle timeout (how long it may sit unused). Both default to 16 hours.
Wrong values (0, text, or an idle timeout longer than the session) are refused with a clear message before anything is saved.
With an idle timeout shorter than the session, an existing "Session expiring" warning with a countdown now shows before the user is logged out.
When the browser loses its connection for more than 10 seconds, a red "Disconnected" pill appears in the header. Its tooltip says the states on screen may be out of date and that the cluster itself is fine. It goes away on its own when the connection comes back.

The flow

Two new settings under Settings > UI

The session timeout and the idle timeout now show next to branding, each with a short description.

Settings, UI tab: before without session settings, after with the idle timeout and session timeout — Before, these two settings existed on the server but were hidden in the UI.

Edit the idle timeout and save

Edit Setting opens a simple form with a value in minutes. We set 2 minutes and save.

The idle timeout form with value 2, and the settings list showing 2 marked Modified — After saving, the list shows the new value, marked "Modified".

Wrong values are stopped

0 is refused, and so is an idle timeout longer than the session timeout.

Two error messages: value must be a whole number above 0; idle timeout cannot be greater than the session timeout — The server itself accepts any value for these two settings, so this check in the form is the only safety net.

Idle users get a warning before logout

With the idle timeout below the session timeout, a "Session expiring" dialog with a countdown appears before the user is logged out.

The Session expiring dialog with a countdown bar and a Resume Session button — The dialog already existed in the UI but never showed, because both timeouts were 16 hours. "Resume Session" keeps the user logged in.

Connection lost: the header now says so

We cut the browser's live connection on the Virtual Machines list and wait 15 seconds.

VM list 15 seconds after the connection dropped: before shows nothing, after shows a red Disconnected pill — Before, the page looks normal while its states may already be stale. After, a red "Disconnected" pill shows in the header.

The pill explains itself

Hovering (or tabbing to) the pill shows what it means and what it does not mean.

Tooltip: the UI lost its connection and is trying to reconnect; states may be outdated; this does not indicate a problem with the cluster — When the connection is back, the pill disappears by itself (shown in the video).

Video (optional)

0:00 Before · 0:35 After: settings and the idle warning · 1:31 After: losing the connection

Notes

This is what the PR proposes at its current version. We have not reviewed this round yet. The PR is up to date with main and has no conflicts, so "Before" is the current main.
The new settings only show on Harvester v1.10 and later. Our test Harvester is v1.9, so the browser reported it as v1.10 (that is why the corner reads v1.10.0 on both sides).
No real setting was changed: every save was answered in the browser. To show the warning dialog without waiting, we also shortened the idle time in the browser only. The lost connection was simulated in the browser; the cluster was never down.
Still true from our first look: inside Rancher (Virtualization Management), the new descriptions replace Rancher's own text for these two settings, so Rancher's Global Settings page would show the Harvester text with raw <code> tags. We can't show it here because it needs Rancher.
Still true: the "Reload" button for when the UI gives up reconnecting never shows with default settings, because by default the UI never stops retrying.
Still true: the message "Increase auth-user-session-ttl-minutes first" also shows on the session timeout form itself, where it reads oddly.