Session timeouts are far too short...

Herbal Deity · 03-08-2010 9:23am #1

I often browse boards from PCs which I don't want to leave a cookie on, thus I log in without clicking the "Remember Me" button.

I find that if I go to reply to a post, spend 5-10 mins composing it, and attempt to submit it, my session times out and I have to log in all over again. This is very annoying.

How long is the timeout limit and can it be increased?

WindSock · 03-08-2010 10:53am

I have noticed it seems to be decreased lately, has it or is time moving more quickly for me?

Terry · 03-08-2010 12:34pm

It doesn't seem to be timing out for me at all.
What's up with that?

Herbal Deity · 03-08-2010 12:56pm

Are you clicking the "Remember Me" box when signing in?

It's fine when you do that, but I often don't want to if I'm on a shared PC (because I'll inevitably forget to sign out).

Ross · 03-08-2010 5:02pm

Hey,

Nothing has really changed since the last time this was asked, here's the reasoning:

Conor wrote: »

As CuLT said, if you tick "Remember me" when logging in then you won't have those problems. (Just remember to log out before letting anyone else use your computer.)

If you don't want to tick "Remember me" or if you forget, then clicking "Preview Post" every few minutes when you're writing a long post should stop you from getting logged out.

The current session time is 15 minutes. This means that 15 minutes of inactivity will cause your session to time out. Increasing that timeout by any non-trivial amount could (in theory) cause a performance issue as the session table in the database is read at least once per page view.

Increasing the session time does have security implications (more for the users than for boards.ie TBH). If you don't log off and someone else uses your computer to access boards.ie within 15 minutes of your last action, they get full access to your account. Increasing the session time increases that window of opportunity.