Laravel 5.1 sessions ending randomly

Question

I have an L5.1 application and am having problems with sessions ending randomly. This happens in my local environment and in a live environment, so this does not seem to be a problem with the server. I am using XAMPP locally with PHP 5.5.11. On a live site there is a dedicated server running Centos 6 with PHP 5.6.13.

The problem arises if I just browse the site in the end after requests drop out on about 20-30 pages, and therefore the user is logged out. I am using a database driver, and here is my session configuration:

<?php return [ /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Default Session Driver |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | This option controls the default session "driver" that will be used on | requests. By default, we will use the lightweight native driver but | you may specify any of the other wonderful drivers provided here. | | Supported: "file", "cookie", "database", "apc", | "memcached", "redis", "array" | */ 'driver' => 'database', /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Lifetime |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Here you may specify the number of minutes that you wish the session | to be allowed to remain idle before it expires. If you want them | to immediately expire on the browser closing, set that option. | */ 'lifetime' => 120, 'expire_on_close' => false, /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Encryption |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | This option allows you to easily specify that all of your session data | should be encrypted before it is stored. All encryption will be run | automatically by Laravel and you can use the Session like normal. | */ 'encrypt' => false, /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session File Location |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | When using the native session driver, we need a location where session | files may be stored. A default has been set for you but a different | location may be specified. This is only needed for file sessions. | */ 'files' => storage_path('framework/sessions'), /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Database Connection |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | When using the "database" or "redis" session drivers, you may specify a | connection that should be used to manage these sessions. This should | correspond to a connection in your database configuration options. | */ 'connection' => null, /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Database Table |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | When using the "database" session driver, you may specify the table we | should use to manage the sessions. Of course, a sensible default is | provided for you; however, you are free to change this as needed. | */ 'table' => 'sessions', /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Sweeping Lottery |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Some session drivers must manually sweep their storage location to get | rid of old sessions from storage. Here are the chances that it will | happen on a given request. By default, the odds are 2 out of 100. | */ 'lottery' => [2, 100], /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Cookie Name |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Here you may change the name of the cookie used to identify a session | instance by ID. The name specified here will get used every time a | new session cookie is created by the framework for every driver. | */ 'cookie' => 'laravel_session', /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Cookie Path |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | The session cookie path determines the path for which the cookie will | be regarded as available. Typically, this will be the root path of | your application but you are free to change this when necessary. | */ 'path' => '/', /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Cookie Domain |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Here you may change the domain of the cookie used to identify a session | in your application. This will determine which domains the cookie is | available to in your application. A sensible default has been set. | */ 'domain' => null, /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | HTTPS Only Cookies |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | By setting this option to true, session cookies will only be sent back | to the server if the browser has a HTTPS connection. This will keep | the cookie from being sent to you if it can not be done securely. | */ 'secure' => false, ]; 

Since I do not manually clear the session anywhere, I am sure that nothing I do can cause it. Are there any known errors that may cause this behavior?

Answer 1

If you use the database driver, sometimes you may encounter problems when the payload field is too short. By default, the payload field is a text field that allows you to receive 64 Kbytes of data.

This may seem like a lot, but since the payload is stored as a serialized array, which is basically a very long string and then base64 encoded, it can easily reach its maximum length, which will effectively ruin the session for this user.

I would suggest changing the data type to MEDIUMTEXT (maximum 16 MB) or rethinking how much data you save in the session in the first place.

Answer 2

Please check your session lottery further in the same config/session.php file

 /* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Session Sweeping Lottery |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Some session drivers must manually sweep their storage location to get | rid of old sessions from storage. Here are the chances that it will | happen on a given request. By default, the odds are 2 out of 100. | */ 'lottery' => [2, 100],