Currently the Hub has a color code "dot" to denote the status of the server (yellow for pending/booting/etc; green for running, blue for stopped, red for destroyed (if you keep the config, or until it disappears). That great and I like it.
During the firstboot/launch stage, it shows the step that it's at (e.g. "booting", "initializing", "installing updates", etc) - with a spinner suggesting work in progress. That's great too IMO.
However, to the untrained eye, unless you notice the words changing, it can appear that nothing is happening (just the spinning...).
I don't suggest major changes to how it is currently, more of an addition. IMO it would be much more transparent if the status were (also) displayed more like a scrolling log (ideally with timestamps IMO). Perhaps a "state history" just showing the last say 4 lines, but ideally scrollable so you could see launch/reboot history for the last x period of time?!.
That would make it clear that stuff actually is happening on firstboot. And actually, if we collected this data, we could even give users some guidance on (i.e. estimate) how long they should reasonably wait before giving up on a server "stuck on yellow". It might also add value for existing users - e.g. being able to check when they last rebooted.
Another thing that I think would be good would be to provide a (user configurable) timeout in case the server fails to boot properly. In my experience it's not common, but occasionally a server will fail to boot. It's almost always never going to work after ~10 minutes of waiting - although a reboot might resolve it?!
Furthermore, on occasions, the server has booted ok, but the Hub missed it. So the Hub should probably check if the server is running first, before trying to reboot it.
Currently the Hub has a color code "dot" to denote the status of the server (yellow for pending/booting/etc; green for running, blue for stopped, red for destroyed (if you keep the config, or until it disappears). That great and I like it.
During the firstboot/launch stage, it shows the step that it's at (e.g. "booting", "initializing", "installing updates", etc) - with a spinner suggesting work in progress. That's great too IMO.
However, to the untrained eye, unless you notice the words changing, it can appear that nothing is happening (just the spinning...).
I don't suggest major changes to how it is currently, more of an addition. IMO it would be much more transparent if the status were (also) displayed more like a scrolling log (ideally with timestamps IMO). Perhaps a "state history" just showing the last say 4 lines, but ideally scrollable so you could see launch/reboot history for the last x period of time?!.
That would make it clear that stuff actually is happening on firstboot. And actually, if we collected this data, we could even give users some guidance on (i.e. estimate) how long they should reasonably wait before giving up on a server "stuck on yellow". It might also add value for existing users - e.g. being able to check when they last rebooted.
Another thing that I think would be good would be to provide a (user configurable) timeout in case the server fails to boot properly. In my experience it's not common, but occasionally a server will fail to boot. It's almost always never going to work after ~10 minutes of waiting - although a reboot might resolve it?!
Furthermore, on occasions, the server has booted ok, but the Hub missed it. So the Hub should probably check if the server is running first, before trying to reboot it.