Session Data Loss because of session.cache_expire?

[db_guy]

Hi, we have a php-based application that is hosted by Yahoo!
Webhosting. Ever since the application was created, it has been
plagued by periodic session data loss. Here's a typical example:

We will successfully input 7 clients into the system, but upon
submitting the 8th, all session data fails to enter the MySQL database.
After viewing the record in the database, the row is empty except for
data that was not stored in a session.

I have been studying the phpinfo() page and came across the
session.cache_expire variable. Here is what I found out about this
variable:

session.cache_expire specifies time-to-live for cached session pages in
minutes, this has no effect for nocache limiter. Defaults to 180.

Forgive my ignorance, but does this mean that after 180 minutes, a
session will expire and be destroyed? If so, is there any way to keep
the session alive, atleast until after the process has been completed
(ex: the client has been added to the system)?

Also, our application utilizes session data extensively- is there
anything that we can do to foster session health (like perform a
session_destroy() after every process to reset things?)

Here is the server info:

PHP 4.3.11
MySQL 3.23.49
FreeBSD 4.8

Thanks,

-Karl

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

db_guy wrote:
<snip>

I have been studying the phpinfo() page and came across the
session.cache_expire variable. Here is what I found out about this
variable:

session.cache_expire specifies time-to-live for cached session pages in
minutes, this has no effect for nocache limiter. Defaults to 180.

Forgive my ignorance, but does this mean that after 180 minutes, a
session will expire and be destroyed?

You're confusing cache_expire with gc_maxlifetime
<http://in.php.net/session#ini.session.gc-maxlifetime>

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