[local-app] heartbeating (keep workspace alive via SSH / whilst using non-browser IDE's)

[akosyakov]

We need to send heartbeats that user workspace does not timeout. We were considering to integrate on level of supervisor terminals, but implies that we have to integrate with supervisor all tools which capable to create terminal devices, i.e. it does not allow custom SSH servers. Instead we can integrate on system level using seccomp notify and intercept write and resize calls to terminal devices. It would also allow use cases when someone create new devices in the app under development, see for instance: https://gitpod.slack.com/archives/C01KGM9DVRC/p1625443266089900

Plan:

• Plan A: provide hearbeat signal based on pseudo-terminal device activity, e.g. using seccomp-notify
• Plan B: provide heartbeat signal based on supervisor terminal activity (requires IDE to integrate with supervisor)

[extrawurst]

I am connecting to my workspace via SSH and I seem to have to a) keep my browser window open and b) visit it once every 30min for the workspace not to timeout - is this issue going to fix that? or should I open a new issue for this?

[akosyakov]

@extrawurst it is about fixing your issue

[akosyakov]

@extrawurst Could you clarify please what for you are using SSH?

[extrawurst]

using it to connect my local vscode to my gitpod workspace (#4780)

[ebrevdo]

I'm also using ssh to run custom bazel commands (building an OSS project)... it takes a while to build and in the meantime the workspace times out and dies :)

(hoping this will work w/ tmux)

[iQQBot]

/assign