[SOLVED] Why do my web sessions keep expiring?

wh33t · 11-26-2021, 08:41 PM

Currently running a LAMP server at my office.

The staff would like to not have to re-log in so often through out the day.

I have set my

Code:

session.cookie_lifetime

to 0 (that means infinite right?) and yet their sessions still keep expiring. Do I need to adjust something in Apache2 as well?

Cheers! Any tips welcome!

ondoho · 11-27-2021, 01:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wh33t

Currently running a LAMP server at my office.

The staff would like to not have to re-log in so often through out the day.

I have set my

Code:

session.cookie_lifetime

to 0 (that means infinite right?) and yet their sessions still keep expiring. Do I need to adjust something in Apache2 as well?

There's not enough info here about what you are serving.
Could be it sets its own session cookies, or has another way of terminating the session.
Are you talking about some CMS with login capabilities?
It could also overwrite the value of session.cookie_lifetime, or you could have edited the wrong config file, or you could've done it wrong, etc.

Lastly, a quick web search(tm) pulls up a lot of info; what reading/troubleshooting have you done already?

michaelk · 11-27-2021, 07:26 AM

0 means until the browser is closed.

As posted not enough information. What type of script is running, did you write the code? There could be some fixed timeout value in the code itself to timeout the session.

wh33t · 11-27-2021, 11:18 AM

This is all code I have written, no framework, no cms. It's an inventory tracking system, it's accessible only on our office network. No public access. I have set session.gc_maxlifetime to 14400, which should be 4 hours. I'll see if that makes a difference. Startpage brought back many results duck.com did not. Cheers all.

There is no code written to automatically terminate the session.

michaelk · 11-27-2021, 04:59 PM

Without seeing an example of your code it is difficult to say why it isn't working as expected.

boughtonp · 11-27-2021, 05:10 PM

For a server, cookies are just HTTP headers. If the correct header values are sent at the correct times then it's not a server issue - but without access to the code and the server, nobody here can say if that's happening or not. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if an expiry value is being set once at login and not updated per request.)

Press F12 to open Developer Tools, select the Network tab, then trigger a request and inspect the HTTP headers.

You can also check Storage>Cookies.

wh33t · 11-27-2021, 06:36 PM

I'd absolutely post some code if there was code to post. I have not written in any code to terminate sessions other than logging out. The ending of sessions in question is related to a server setting.

Since I increased the value of session.gc_maxlifetime in my php.ini file I have not yet experienced a session timing out, so I think that was the setting I needed to adjust. Appreciate the responses guys!

Cheers.