Sessions - Ini settings and timeout

I have some questions about sessions timeout and sessions ini settings. In php.ini I have session.gc_maxlifetime = 30 (for testing purpose only) , session.gc_probability = 1 and session.gc_divisor = 100 (didn't touch this values) I have two simple pages page1.php --------- session_start(); $_SESSION["test"] = "TEST"; <a href="page2.php">test timeout</a> page2.php ========= session_start(); if (!isset($_SESSION["test"]) ) { echo "no session"; die(); } print_r($_SESSION); I open page1.php in the browser and only click in the link after waiting more than 30 seconds (session.gc_maxlifetime). After this period what should happen with $_SESSION["test"] in page2.php? In php, session.gc_maxlifetime: ; After this number of seconds, stored data will be seen as 'garbage' and ; cleaned up by the garbage collection process. I need to understand this and get a way to automaticly logout a user after n minutes of inactivity. My environment: Windows XP PRO SP2, apache 2.2.4, php 5.2.4 (apache module), mysql 5.4.5 Best regards holo