Session Expiration

[completeNoob]

I'm very new to working with session data in php and I can't figure out why this happened.

assume I have this very simple code:

session_start();

$_SESSION['someKey']= $someValue;

with

session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 (24 minutes)

say I run the above code, shut down my computer and come back 6 hours later.

What does it mean that $_SESSION['someKey'] is still set with $someValue?

if gc_maxlifetime is 24 minutes shouldn't that data have been removed?

Any explanation or a reference to some kind of comprehensive guide on php sessions would be greatly appreciated!

[NogDog]

What are the settings for session.gc_probability and session.gc_divisor?

Also, I'm not sure what the sequence of events is for the garbage collection; so if no one else has executed a session_start() on that site since you left it, the gc function will not have run, and if session_start() reads the data before firing off the gc function, then the data might still be read in to your session. (This of course assumes that the session cookie has not yet expired?)

[Jack_McSlay]

I've experienced cases in which I started a session, came back a whole day later and the session was still there. from what I know, the session cleaning algorithm is executed only once in a while, randomly. if you want to force a session cleaning, use session_unset() / session_destroy()