PHP Session Timeouts

[MattHawkins]

I'm using PHP sessions on a few sites.

I'm finding that the sessions are being destroyed after a random period of time. Often this is within minutes of them being created.

This has the effect of logging me out before I've had the chance to make the changes within my CMS edit page.

The default timeout for PHP sessions is usually 24 minutes but sometimes my sessions are dropping within 30 seconds.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

[Kieran]

Hi Matt.

I have sent you PM for session issue. Please check it and let me know if you have any query.

[paulmann]

I'm now having exactly the same problem. Seems to have started fairly recently. The session details disappear after a few seconds resulting in users having to log in again. Any solution?

[Kieran]

Hi Paul.

I have sent you PM for possible session issue. Please check it and provide me affected domain's information.

[MattHawkins]

My session.gc_maxlifetime is set to 1440 so I wouldn't expect any session to last less than 24 minutes. Given the gc_probability is set to 1% I would expect some sessions to last longer than that.

Even the 24 minutes is an "inactivity" time. While I'm hitting pages I would expect the session to last forever.

At the moment I have made my system slightly more robust by issuing an ajax call to a php file containing session_start() every 2 minutes. This seems to keep the session alive while I am on particular pages. But seems like a unnecessary fudge to me ...

[DavidAllen]

Best way to have complete control is to store sessions in a database.

[maddyforya]

I am having the same issue. Can you please help.... the session gets destroyed in 15-30 seconds in an average despite have set it at 20 minutes. please help

[DavidAllen]

See this for how to use a database to store sessions - thus avoiding unwanted timeouts