How long will my session last?
Can someone please tell me how long my session will last from the data below? - I'm not sure which one tells me
session.auto_start Off Off
session.bug_compat_42 Off Off
session.bug_compat_warn On On
session.cache_expire 180 180
session.cache_limiter nocache nocache
session.cookie_domain no value no value
session.cookie_httponly Off Off
session.cookie_lifetime 0 0
session.cookie_path / /
session.cookie_secure Off Off
session.entropy_file no value no value
session.entropy_length 0 0
session.gc_divisor 1000 1000
session.gc_maxlifetime 1440 1440
session.gc_probability 1 1
session.hash_bits_per_character 5 5
session.hash_function 0 0
session.name PHPSESSID PHPSESSID
session.referer_check no value no value
session.save_handler files files
session.save_path /var/lib/php/session /var/lib/php/session
session.serialize_handler php php
session.use_cookies On On
session.use_only_cookies Off Off
session.use_trans_sid 0 0
Solution 1:
In general you can say session.gc_maxlifetime specifies the maximum lifetime since the last change of your session data (not the last time session_start
was called!). But PHP’s session handling is a little bit more complicated.
Because the session data is removed by a garbage collector that is only called by session_start
with a probability of session.gc_probability devided by session.gc_divisor. The default values are 1 and 100, so the garbage collector is only started in only 1% of all session_start
calls. That means even if the the session is already timed out in theory (the session data had been changed more than session.gc_maxlifetime seconds ago), the session data can be used longer than that.
Because of that fact I recommend you to implement your own session timeout mechanism. See my answer to How do I expire a PHP session after 30 minutes? for more details.
Solution 2:
This is the one. The session will last for 1440 seconds (24 minutes).
session.gc_maxlifetime 1440 1440