Harvester UI · Reviewed

Deleting several VMs keeps their disks when the box says so

When users delete several VMs at once, the dialog has a box to delete their disks too. Today that box opens unticked, needs two clicks, and is ignored anyway: every disk is deleted. With this fix the box opens ticked, one click changes it, and unticking it really keeps the disks.

Changes requested · needs a unit test PR 1146 ↗ Issue 11247 ↗

What changes for the user

Today, deleting several VMs at once always deletes their disks too, even when the "Delete All" box is unticked. Users can lose data they meant to keep.
With the fix, unticking the box keeps the disks. Ticked, the disks are deleted as before.
The box now opens ticked, so it shows what will happen. Before, it opened unticked.
One click changes the box. Before, the first click did not stick and users had to click twice.
The bug has been in every Harvester UI extension release since mid-2024. Deleting a single VM was not affected.

Needs a decision

This is a data-loss bug in every release, but the issue sits at low severity (severity/4) in v1.10.0. Should we ask to raise its priority and backport the fix to current releases?

The flow

Select several VMs and click Delete

We select three VMs on the Virtual Machines list and click Delete. This part is the same on both sides.

Three VMs selected on the Virtual Machines list, Delete button highlighted, before and after — Same list, same three VMs, same Delete button on both sides.

The dialog opens: is the disks box ticked?

The "Delete All" box decides if the VMs' disks are deleted too.

Before: the Delete All box opens unticked. After: it opens ticked — Before, the box opened unticked, although Delete was going to remove the disks. After, it opens ticked, which matches what Delete does by default.

Click the box once

Before, the first click did not stick. After, one click changes it.

Before: after one click the box is still unticked. After: one click unticks it — Before, we clicked to tick the box and it jumped back to unticked. Users had to click a second time. After, one click unticks it.

Delete with the box unticked: are the disks kept?

We confirm with the box unticked and look at what Delete asks Harvester to remove.

Before: Delete removes the VMs and their disks. After: the VMs only, disks kept — Before, Delete removed the three VMs and their disks, although the box was unticked. After, it removes the VMs only and keeps the disks. In this demo we stopped the delete in the browser, so nothing was removed.

Video (optional)

0:00 Before · 0:24 After · 0:55 The VMs are still there

Notes

How we checked: earlier today we deleted throwaway VMs for real on our test Harvester, both in standalone Harvester and in the Harvester extension inside Rancher 2.16. Without the fix, the disks were deleted with the box unticked. With the fix, unticking kept them, and leaving it ticked deleted them.
The images and the video on this page were made without deleting anything: the delete was stopped in the browser, and we checked afterwards that all three VMs were still there.
Our review: the fix is right. We asked the author to add a unit test, so the review is "Changes requested".
The fix comes from a community contributor and is one line. It has been open since September with no review from a Harvester maintainer.