Public bug reported: The Ubuntu distribution of PHP doesn't use the usual PHP mechanism of session garbage collection. It sets "session.gc_probability" to zero in the php.ini file, thus making it seem like garbage collection is disabled. In fact it still occurs but with a cron job.
In my Docker image, the PHP "sessionclean" program is being executed and it seems that this uses the "session.gc_maxlifetime" setting from the apache2 version of the php.ini file. However this is non-obvious and not documented in the php.ini file. Thus when recently rebuilding my Docker image for my web service, I started getting what seemed to be premature session timeouts and I couldn't figure out why and I ended up raising a bug on the PHP team (https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76368). If the Ubuntu team is going to modify the PHP package so it differs in behaviour from the description in the PHP provided documentation, then they need to provide updated documentation. I would suggest that the simplest solution is to update the php.ini file so that where "session.gc_probability" is set to zero there is a short paragraph saying why (because it is handled by the cron job) and also make it clear somewhere in that file that the "session.gc_maxlifetime" setting is still relevant even though "session.gc_probability" is zero. ** Affects: php5 (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1772915 Title: Documentation on PHP session garbage collection needs updating. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php5/+bug/1772915/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
