Define expected behavior when fleetd starts/restarts while device is offline

fleetdm / fleet

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Define expected behavior when fleetd starts/restarts while device is offline #21277

Open gillespi314 opened 1 month ago

gillespi314 commented 1 month ago

Problem:

What is the expected behavior when fleetd starts/restarts while device is offline?

Currently in this case, fleetd (Orbit) fails to fetch the latest config from the server so it never launches Fleet Desktop. As a result, the end user doesn't see Fleet Desktop in their systray, and Fleet Desktop processes like the MDM migration offline watcher won't run.

Other fleetd processes that depend on the config are similarly impacted, which may lead to confusing/frustrating UX.

Next steps:

Define the expected offline behavior for various Fleet agent processes
Implement offline persistence for configs (e.g., save to a local file so that they can be accessed offline)

georgekarrv commented 1 month ago

Assigning to Luke to let him prioritize Eng init

lukeheath commented 3 weeks ago

@gillespi314 Thanks for filing!

This seems more like a bug than a story to me. We expect that fleetd always connects when a device goes online, so it is a defect if it doesn't. What do you think? (cc @georgekarrv)

If you agree, please reformat the ticket a a bug and label accordingly. If I'm missing why this isn't bug just let me know. Thanks!

georgekarrv commented 3 weeks ago

It's just that this is how it's 'worked' for all time. If it cannot download the config from the server it fails to start. This would include defining what is expected to work and how a possible 'cached config' should be obeyed while offline and then when it can reconnect how to reconcile possible config changes that occurred while offline makes it feel like more than a bug.

lukeheath commented 2 weeks ago

@georgekarrv Got it. Sounds like something we'd need product feedback on, since it will impact the end user UX. Definitely important issue to consider, but given current priorities and this being long-lived behavior, I'm going to defer for now.