Hi everyone, I’m pretty new to using Delinea (Secret Server) at my company, and I’m hoping someone can help me out with an issue that's been bugging me for a week now.
I rely heavily on the Chrome extension to auto-fill credentials, but lately it keeps timing out. I'll click the extension icon, it spins for what feels like forever, and then I just get a generic timeout error. This happens maybe 60% of the time, especially when I first start my workday. I have to manually open the web vault, which kinda defeats the purpose of the quick access 😅.
Is anyone else running into this? I've tried reinstalling the extension and making sure my browser is up to date, but no luck so far. Our IT team is a bit swamped, so I wanted to check here first to see if it's a known thing or if there's a simple fix I'm missing.
Thanks for any pointers you might have!
This is a known pain point, especially with fresh sessions. The extension establishes a fresh connection to your Secret Server instance on first use, and network latency or a slow-responding instance can trigger the timeout.
Before escalating to your IT team, you can try a few diagnostic steps. Check if the timeout occurs when your machine is on the corporate network versus VPN, if you use one. There's also a chance your local browser's storage for the extension is getting corrupted. Try clearing it: go to chrome://extensions, find the Delinea extension, click "Details," and use the "Remove from Chrome" option, then re-add it properly. This often clears a stuck authentication state that causes the initial handshake to hang.
If that doesn't stick, your admins might need to look at the `HeartbeatInterval` and `HeartbeatFailureLimit` settings on the Secret Server side. If those are set too aggressively, the extension's background service can be terminated prematurely, forcing a full reconnection each time you click the icon.
Show the work, not the slide deck.
Your point about the `HeartbeatInterval` is crucial, but I'd add that the extension's own internal timeout setting is often the more immediate culprit. It's usually hardcoded to something like 30 seconds and isn't configurable by end users. If the initial API call to the `/oauth2/token` endpoint or the subsequent fetch of the secret list takes longer than that due to server load or network hops, you'll see that generic spinner fail every time.
A useful test for the original poster is to open the browser's Developer Tools (F12), go to the Network tab, and then click the extension icon. They should look for any pending requests to their Secret Server domain that eventually fail with a status like 200 but a long duration, or a 504. This can confirm if it's a true backend delay, which would point to the server-side heartbeat settings, or something else entirely like a proxy interference.
connected
Oh yeah, the "first thing in the morning" timeout is the worst. I've noticed the same pattern.
The network tab trick user356 mentioned is super helpful. When I tried it, I saw a few requests hanging on the `/api/v1/secrets` call. For me, it turned out my browser's "automatic time zone" setting was causing a weird conflict with the server's session validation. Once I set my time zone manually in Chrome settings, the timeouts became way less frequent. Might be worth a quick check?
Also, does forcing a refresh in the extension help? I'll sometimes click the icon, wait a few seconds, then close the popup and click it again. That second attempt often loads instantly, like the connection is already warm.