Session Timeout

[Jim]

The dreaded Session state :-)

All, Just to give a little background this is reagarding an ASP 3.0
application running on IIS6 using the default app pool.

I have set the session timeout to 540 minutes in IIS (under options tab in
Application configuration). There is no code in the Session_OnStart or
Session_OnEnd in the global.asa. Via an include file, each page executes
these no-cache related code:
Response.Buffer = True
Response.Expire sAbsolute = Now() - 1
Response.Expire s = 0
Response.CacheC ontrol = "no-cache"
Response.CacheC ontrol = "private"

Sorry, just wanted to give some background on what we're dealing with.
Anyways, the problem is that the users are saying their session state is
expiring much sooner than 540 minutes. How is this possible? What did I miss?
Are there better techniques to ensure the 540 minute session?

Thanks in advance,
Jim

[Bob Barrows [MVP]]

jaco wrote:

Hi Bob,

We are currently storing about 30 user profile settings as session
variables in a asp site.
What are you storing? Strings? Arrays? COM objects?

Since moving to Windows 2003 R2 with IIS6.0 we are experiencing
unexpected session timeouts. The session timeout interval is set to
480 minutes or 8 hours. Our users are however complaining that they
are experiencing timeouts more randomly and over much shorter
intervals.

Users have to log in again when their session is timed out.

Implementing a new Session State Management Sub System using cookies
and/or files and/or SQL DB is not an option purely due to the cost in
retesting and redistributing the site.

So the question remains. Why are sessions timing out prematurely?

Sorry, I don't know. You should try posting to the .inetserver.iis
group.

We'd appreciate if you would post whatever solution you find here.

....

I just did a google search and came up with
http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/arc...e_on_IIS6.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/233477
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...20&sa=N&tab=wg

Do any of these help?

--
Microsoft MVP -- ASP/ASP.NET
Please reply to the newsgroup. The email account listed in my From
header is my spam trap, so I don't check it very often. You will get a
quicker response by posting to the newsgroup.

[jaco]

Strings only

"Bob Barrows [MVP]" wrote:

jaco wrote:

Hi Bob,

We are currently storing about 30 user profile settings as session
variables in a asp site.

What are you storing? Strings? Arrays? COM objects?

Since moving to Windows 2003 R2 with IIS6.0 we are experiencing
unexpected session timeouts. The session timeout interval is set to
480 minutes or 8 hours. Our users are however complaining that they
are experiencing timeouts more randomly and over much shorter
intervals.

Users have to log in again when their session is timed out.

Implementing a new Session State Management Sub System using cookies
and/or files and/or SQL DB is not an option purely due to the cost in
retesting and redistributing the site.

So the question remains. Why are sessions timing out prematurely?

Sorry, I don't know. You should try posting to the .inetserver.iis
group.

We'd appreciate if you would post whatever solution you find here.

....

I just did a google search and came up with
http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/arc...e_on_IIS6.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/233477
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...20&sa=N&tab=wg

Do any of these help?

--
Microsoft MVP -- ASP/ASP.NET
Please reply to the newsgroup. The email account listed in my From
header is my spam trap, so I don't check it very often. You will get a
quicker response by posting to the newsgroup.

[Aramazd]

We had similar problems after moving to Windows 2003 and IIS 6 as well. In our case, the culprit turned out to be the "Idle timeout" setting for the "Worker Process" "Applicatio n Pool."

The default value for the "idle timout" is 20 minutes. So if there are no hits to any web pages in any web application on any web sites in the shared application pool within 20 minutes, the worker process of the application pool will re-start, therby ending all active sessions of all web pages, web applications and web sites running in that application pool.

Our solution was to disable the "idle timeout" and institute a daily restart of the worker process every night.

Here's a link for "Configurin g Worker Processes for Idle Timeout (IIS 6.0)":
http://www.microsoft.c om/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer20 03/Library/IIS/83b35271-c93c-49f4-b923-7fdca6fae1cf.ms px?mfr=true

Good luck! :)
Aramazd