095RC2+ Manager Session Timeouts

Split from 095 public Release Candidate support
Quote from: lw-d at Nov 15, 2006, 01:21 PM

Quote from: rthrash at Nov 15, 2006, 01:19 PM

Quote from: lw-d at Nov 15, 2006, 12:38 PM

Not sure if this is a modx issue or a server issue, but I keep on getting logged out of the admin area.

PHP sessions typically time out after 22 minutes or so. That time can vary depending on your server config. If you don’t do anything in that timeframe, there’s a good chance you will be logged out of the admin.

thanks, although, I am getting logged out every minute or so, might check with my host.

Any luck on the fast session timeouts?

Quote from: lw-d at Nov 15, 2006, 01:21 PM

Quote from: rthrash at Nov 15, 2006, 01:19 PM

Quote from: lw-d at Nov 15, 2006, 12:38 PM

Not sure if this is a modx issue or a server issue, but I keep on getting logged out of the admin area.

PHP sessions typically time out after 22 minutes or so. That time can vary depending on your server config. If you don’t do anything in that timeframe, there’s a good chance you will be logged out of the admin.

thanks, although, I am getting logged out every minute or so, might check with my host.

I had this problem on my server as well. Because my site was on a shared host, and one of the other sites running on the same virtual server had set a very short PHP session timeout, and because PHP by default will store all of the sessions across all shared hosts in the same directory, my site’s sessions were being purged at the same time as that other site’s sessions, even though my site was configured to use the long session timeout.

The solution for me was to configure my site to store its session files in a different directory, by adding this to the .htaccess file for my site:

php_value session.save_path /home/i/impro/tmp/

Where /home/i/impro/tmp/ is a directory outside my web root (and therefore not accessible to browsers) with the appropriate permissions set to ensure that PHP can write to it.

I think that manager timeouts are problematic even when PHP sessions last for a long period. I have lost a couple of documents this way, because there is no notification that you have been timed out and it is only when you click on the save button that you realise that you have lost all of your edits. Ideally, the manager should save any work that has been edited within the RTE, instead of discarding it.

Anton

Dokuwiki has some great functionality similar to this, popping up a JavaScript warning one minute before your lock on a document that you are editing will expire, for example.

All solutions, it seems, would begin with MODX implementing its own session management, however.

Quote from: kyank at Nov 27, 2006, 06:09 PM

All solutions, it seems, would begin with MODX implementing its own session management, however.

100% agreed, and this will be done in the next minor release following 0.9.5, featuring by default:

[*] session data stored in the database
[*] completely configurable via system settings (including session timeouts, cookie expirations, cookie domain, etc.)
[*] override the default implementation with your own custom session management class, following PHP standards

I tried to make this a part of 0.9.5, but it fits more comfortably in the next release and I don’t want to delay 0.9.5 delivery any longer.

Am about to split out the manager time out issues as they are not particularly specific to RC2 and the area won’t be changed for Final.

Thanks Paul... sounds great.