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Disconnect vs. Lock workstation

Pepa Kokes, User (Posts: 32)
Jan 31, 2020 2:04:53 am EST
Support level: Free or trial
When a Remote Utilities Full Control connection to a computer ends, the computer gets locked. That's as it should be. However, I am encountering an undesirable locking behavior in conjunction with short disconnects:

1) Viewer connects to a Host in Full Control mode and controls the computer for a while.
2) A momentary disconnect occurs.
3) Viewer tries to reconnect in five seconds and succeeds.
4) Viewer can still control the computer for a while.
5) After a short while, the computer gets locked.

This is definitely incorrect. I suspect it is caused by the fact that disconnections can't get detected other than by missing a timeout and when that occurs, the Host doesn't care whether a connection is still available and simply locks the workstation. Unfortunately, it means that a computer may remain unlocked for some time and that someone can connect to a computer and work with it without unlocking. I think these fixes should be considered:

1) Decrease the timeout for "connection lost" on the Host. It might be a good idea to make it user-configurable.

2) Do not lock workstation on "connection lost" if another connection is active.

3) A Host configuration option to *also* lock the workstation on each Viewer connect. Default: Not active.

4) A Host configuration option to mitigate #3 in such a way that if the same host (identified by e.g. a nonce sent by the Host to the Viewer during the previous successful connection) reconnects without being properly disconnected while the workstation is not locked, #3 will be skipped for this Host. Default: Active.
Pauline, Support (Posts: 2848)
Jan 31, 2020 10:05:16 am EST
Hello Pepa,

Thank you for your message.

This is a known issue as we were able to reproduce it and we will be implementing a fix for the issue in our future updates. However, thank you for your suggestions. I will forward them to our development team to see if we can implement any of them.

Please let me know if you have other questions.

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