Re: possible problems working with sessions

Sorry if I'm off-topic, but I've always wondered what people use sessions for. I seem to be either dealing with "logged-in" users who I pick up via http-authentication and maintain any details I need in a user data structure, or casual users, for whom the odd hidden input field or occasional cookie seems quite enough. I guess I'm also nervous of anything state-full, especially if it makes you dependent on cookies/funny urls/IP addresses etc.. So why do people use sessions? Alberto Mucignat wrote: > > well, if you're using default session handling provided with php, users > sessions are stored in /tmp directory (also used by default for temporary > caching of uploaded files). assume to have the php.ini file with default > settings: > > session.gc_probability = 1 > session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 > > this means garbage collector lauched 1 times every 100 started sessions. > furthermore, deletable sessions are those ones opened 1440 seconds ago (24 > minutes). > > well, i've doing some tries asking web server the following by wget command, > (but i suppose you can use also a sockopen or CURL (!) functions...): > > HEAD /test_session.php HTTP/1.0 > > where /test_session.php simply starts a session with "session_start()" > function. every single request create a session file in the /tmp server > directory. if someone find out how to do many simultanious requests could > create so many files in the /tmp dir (while the garbage clean them only after > 24 minutes). > > we know that linux filesystem is limited to 64K files per directory. this could > create problems... > > obviously there are some kind of solutions... > - play with session.gc_* php settings in order to prevent problems (but i > can't be sure that's a good idea...) > - provide a different session storage than the default one. in this case, you > have only two other solutions: mm and database storage. i prefer to store > sessions in a database, because with mm this could generate worse problems > with memory usage... > > but i mean... there are so many php developers that uses php with default > settings (for example: newbies that uses phpnuke or other php content manager > "session based")... > > about sessions i've found: > http://www.phpwizard.net/resources/tutorials/session_intro.html > seen Tobias around? :-) > > bye, alberto. > > ps: well, i work with session since not long time, so can be i made a > mistake...