SSH tunnel closes when any session in the VPN group is disconnected

SSH tunnel closes when any session in the VPN group is disconnected

avatar
tfabo

Hello,
first of all, I would like to mention that this is not a newly discovered issue. It's been present for quite some time, but I decided not to report it immediately because I thought it would be fixed in a newer version. Currently, I'm running RDM in version 2026.3.1.2.

I have a folder containing several SSH connections. The folder structure is as follows (for reference)":
To connect to any of these connections, an SSH tunnel must first be established. To simplify the configuration, all connections and subfolders are set to "Inherited" in the "VPN/tunnel/Gateway" settings:
The parent folder (Test folder) is then configured as follows:
Previously, this worked as expected. If I had three SSH connections open that belonged to the same VPN group, the required SSH tunnel remained active and was closed only after the last SSH connection from the group was disconnected.
What happens now is that if I have 3 SSH connections open and close just one of them, it closes the SSH tunnel connection right away, which obviously kills the other 2 SSH connections, because they depend on that tunnel.

I'm not sure if this is intended or if I'm missing something in the configuration. If this is expected, could you please advise how to configure it so that the SSH tunnel remains active until the last SSH session within the defined VPN group is closed?
Otherwise, could you please look into this and if you also find this behavior wrong, fix it?

Thank you.

Best regards,
Tomas

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All Comments (3)

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Tommy Sanders

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us on that matter,

Your configuration matches what is expected for this scenario. The VPN group name is set, and Close is set to "On session close" on the parent folder, with the child entries set to Inherited. With this setup, the tunnel should stay open until the last session of the group is closed. What you are seeing does not look like intended behavior.

To help us narrow it down, could you please try the following test:

1. On two of the SSH entries, replace "Inherited" with the same settings as the parent folder (Always connect, SSH link, same linked session, On session close, same VPN group name).
2. Open both sessions, then close only one of them.
3. Let us know if the tunnel stays open for the remaining session.

This will tell us whether the issue is related to inheritance or to the VPN group counter itself.

Could you also send us:
- The application logs, available in Help > Logs (or the log folder), right after reproducing the issue.
- The exact macOS version you are using.
- If possible, the last RDM version where this worked as expected.

Best regards,

Tommy Sanders

avatar
tfabo

Hi Tommy,

I just tested it, and it appears to be related to the VPN group counter (if that's really the culprit here), not to inheritance. I opened two SSH sessions, then closed one, and the tunnel was closed immediately, causing the other SSH session to disconnect as well.

  • unfortunately, I can't see any logs available under Help -> Application Logs. Perhaps I need to increase the debug level?
  • I'm running macOS 26.7.1
  • I'm sorry, but I don't remember the last RDM version in which this worked as expected. I think the first time I discovered this was around June or July this year. I should have written this down, because I now realize that it would make troubleshooting this issue much easier.
avatar
Tommy Sanders

Hello,

Thank you for your response,

Since the issue still occurs with the settings applied directly on the entries, we can rule out inheritance. The problem appears to be with the VPN group itself: the tunnel should only close when the last session of the group is closed. I'm escalating this to our macOS development team as a defect.

To include logs in the report, could you please:

  1. Go to Settings > Advanced and set the Debug level to the highest level.
  2. Restart RDM, then reproduce the issue: open two SSH sessions from the group, then close one.
  3. Send us the log files from the logs folder (in RDM: Help > Show logs folder, or under ~/Library/Application Support/ in the Remote Desktop Manager folder).


You can send it to me in private.

Also, since you're on 2026.3.1.2, could you update to the latest macOS version of RDM and confirm whether the behavior is the same?

In the meantime, as a workaround, you can set the Close option of the parent folder's VPN/tunnel settings to On application close instead of On session close. The tunnel will then stay open until you quit RDM, which keeps your other SSH sessions connected.

Best regards,

Tommy Sanders