PHP session timeout is 0, But users logged out when browser is idle for sometime

Question

I have set the maxlifetime for sessions to be 0 in php.ini, so; as I understand it will be available until I close the browser.

But it doesn't, as when I leave the browser idle for sometime, and I get back to work on the app, I get to login page, which means that the session is destroyed !!

Any suggestions ?!

Answer 1

There is another lifetime setting which specifies after which time the server may remove the session to avoid to many stale sessions hogging the server's resources.

Quoting from the manual:

session.gc_maxlifetime specifies the number of seconds after which data will be seen as 'garbage' and potentially cleaned up. Garbage collection may occur during session start (depending on session.gc_probability and session.gc_divisor).