Troubleshooting Remote Terminal

Obtaining mender-connect logs

You usually need logs in order to diagnose an issue.

The mender-connect by default logs to the system log using systemd, so the easiest way to retrieve logs is to run the following command:

journalctl -u mender-connect

Too many open sessions

When attempting to connect with Remote Terminal to a device, e.g. via the Mender web UI, you get the following error:

Error: user has too many open sessions

The Remote Terminal feature by default allows one open session to the device at the time, for each user account of the Mender Server. Since the limit is per user account, other users of your Mender Server may still be able to log in to the device.

If you get the above error, make sure you do not have too many browser tabs or CLI windows with an open Remote Terminal session to the device.

You can increase this limit if you wish. See the configuration of mender-connect, in particular the Sessions.MaxPerUser setting. Also note the Sessions.ExpireAfterIdle setting, which allows you to set a timeout for sessions.

Remote terminal sometimes not working

If you notice that remote terminal isn't available at one time, but is after checking again after a few minutes, this is the autoheal mechanism of the remote terminal in action.

There is a hardcoded, 60 second, websocket ping timeout used to maintain a notion of a connection. As soon as that times out, the remote terminal will close the current connection and attempt to create a new to reestablish the communication with the server.