ASP Sessions time out too early

I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
the Session.Timeout = 360 and in IIS, I've gone into the application
pool and set every possible timeout to 360 minutes (or as high as I can
set it in seconds).

My problem is that people are still being kicked off the application.
Many people's sessions seem to timeout in only a few minutes. Others
however seem to last an hour or two (but not the full 360 minutes).

Is there some way I can set this on IIS? Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance,

-Tom

Egbert
Mon Jul 24 17:19:19 CDT 2006


"Tom Cat" <stry_cat@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1153766422.205180.46250@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
> the Session.Timeout = 360 and in IIS, I've gone into the application
> pool and set every possible timeout to 360 minutes (or as high as I can
> set it in seconds).
>
> My problem is that people are still being kicked off the application.
> Many people's sessions seem to timeout in only a few minutes. Others
> however seem to last an hour or two (but not the full 360 minutes).
>
> Is there some way I can set this on IIS? Am I doing something wrong?

Could it be that IIS (6?) resets the process? If so, the sessions are lost.
Keep in mind that the Session state on Classic ASP is kept in RAM.
Therefore, you have a rather unreliable mechanism to store temporary data.

--
compatible web farm Session replacement for Asp and Asp.Net
http://www.nieropwebconsult.nl/asp_session_manager.htm

> Thanks in advance,
>
> -Tom
>

David
Mon Jul 24 18:12:05 CDT 2006

If IIS6 -

http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2005/09/19/Why_do_I_lose_ASP_Session_State_on_IIS6.aspx

--
//David
IIS
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
//

"Tom Cat" <stry_cat@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1153766422.205180.46250@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
> the Session.Timeout = 360 and in IIS, I've gone into the application
> pool and set every possible timeout to 360 minutes (or as high as I can
> set it in seconds).
>
> My problem is that people are still being kicked off the application.
> Many people's sessions seem to timeout in only a few minutes. Others
> however seem to last an hour or two (but not the full 360 minutes).
>
> Is there some way I can set this on IIS? Am I doing something wrong?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> -Tom
>

Egbert
Tue Jul 25 05:06:43 CDT 2006


"David Wang [Msft]" <someone@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:erdtXa3rGHA.1196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> If IIS6 -
>
> http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2005/09/19/Why_do_I_lose_ASP_Session_State_on_IIS6.aspx


Hi David,

This handy COM server, is the most convenient way for ASP classic
programmers to work-around the web-garden and web-farm issue, while they
still can maintain the same ASP Session coding syntax. :)

http://www.nieropwebconsult.nl/asp_session_manager.htm

Cheers

David
Tue Jul 25 05:16:37 CDT 2006

Yup. I actually reference that URL in the comments of the blog entry...

--
//David
IIS
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
//

"Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS)" <egbert_nierop@nospam.invalid> wrote in
message news:O2$kII9rGHA.3964@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>
> "David Wang [Msft]" <someone@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:erdtXa3rGHA.1196@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> If IIS6 -
>>
>> http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2005/09/19/Why_do_I_lose_ASP_Session_State_on_IIS6.aspx
>
>
> Hi David,
>
> This handy COM server, is the most convenient way for ASP classic
> programmers to work-around the web-garden and web-farm issue, while they
> still can maintain the same ASP Session coding syntax. :)
>
> http://www.nieropwebconsult.nl/asp_session_manager.htm
>
> Cheers

Egbert
Tue Jul 25 05:25:56 CDT 2006


"David Wang [Msft]" <someone@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:OjMQkO9rGHA.1924@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Yup. I actually reference that URL in the comments of the blog entry...

thanks!
Didn't know that. I owe you for that one! :)

> --
> //David
> IIS

Daniel
Tue Jul 25 05:48:55 CDT 2006

Tom wrote on 24 Jul 2006 11:40:22 -0700:

> I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
> the Session.Timeout = 360

Are you sure that's right? If so, there's your problem - the .Timeout
property is seconds, so you're forcing all your ASP pages to change the
Session timeout to 6 minutes.

Dan

Egbert
Tue Jul 25 06:02:17 CDT 2006


"Daniel Crichton" <msnews@worldofspack.com> wrote in message
news:u8aPuf9rGHA.1192@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Tom wrote on 24 Jul 2006 11:40:22 -0700:
>
>> I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
>> the Session.Timeout = 360
>
> Are you sure that's right? If so, there's your problem - the .Timeout
> property is seconds, so you're forcing all your ASP pages to change the
> Session timeout to 6 minutes.

You would quickly think so.
ms-help://MS.MSDNQTR.v80.en/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.WEBDEV.v10.en/iissdk/html/a3b9a343-7704-4607-becb-ba143d3d62b9.htm

From the local MSDN excerpt...
Timout: Specifies the number of minutes that a session can remain idle
before the server terminates it automatically. The default is 10 minutes.
Session.Timeout has no hard-coded limit. Most Web administrators set this
property to 8 minutes. It should not be set higher than 20 minutes (except
in special cases) because every open session is holding onto memory. It
should also not be set lower than 4 minutes because clients rarely respond
within that time resulting in a loss of session state.

IIS 6.0: The minimum allowed value is 1 minute and the maximum is 1440
minutes.

Daniel
Tue Jul 25 06:10:35 CDT 2006

Egbert wrote on Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:02:17 +0200:

>
> "Daniel Crichton" <msnews@worldofspack.com> wrote in message news:u8aPuf9rGHA.1192@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> Tom wrote on 24 Jul 2006 11:40:22 -0700:
>>
>>> I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
>>> the Session.Timeout = 360
>>
>> Are you sure that's right? If so, there's your problem - the .Timeout
>> property is seconds, so you're forcing all your ASP pages to change the
>> Session timeout to 6 minutes.
>
> You would quickly think so.
> ms-help://MS.MSDNQTR.v80.en/MS.MSDN.v80/MS.WEBDEV.v10.en/iissdk/html/a3b9a343-7704-4607-becb-ba143d3d62b9.htm
>
> From the local MSDN excerpt...
> Timout: Specifies the number of minutes that a session can remain idle
> before the server terminates it automatically. The default is 10 minutes.
> Session.Timeout has no hard-coded limit. Most Web administrators set this
> property to 8 minutes. It should not be set higher than 20 minutes (except
> in special cases) because every open session is holding onto memory. It
> should also not be set lower than 4 minutes because clients rarely respond
> within that time resulting in a loss of session state.
>
> IIS 6.0: The minimum allowed value is 1 minute and the maximum is 1440
> minutes.

Well I'll be. While I've never bothered changing session timeouts in ASP
myself (my server has them disabled, I use a simple object that persists to
a database for the few pages I require session handling on) I'd always
assumed it was in seconds. I guess I've learned something today.

Dan

Tom
Tue Jul 25 07:16:01 CDT 2006

David Wang [Msft] wrote:
> If IIS6 -
>
> http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2005/09/19/Why_do_I_lose_ASP_Session_State_on_IIS6.aspx
>

Thanks. That was very interesting. If I understand what he's saying,
I need to set the recycle timeout to 1440 or higher... Only problem is
that it has been set to 1740. That's the only one of the recycle
checkboxes I have checked.

I only need the sessions to last during work hours (8am-5pm). Would
using the "Recycle processes at the following times" checkbox be the
best way to do this. I'd have them recycle at 7:30 and 5:30?

> --
> //David
> IIS
> http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
> //
>
> "Tom Cat" <stry_cat@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1153766422.205180.46250@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
> > the Session.Timeout = 360 and in IIS, I've gone into the application
> > pool and set every possible timeout to 360 minutes (or as high as I can
> > set it in seconds).
> >
> > My problem is that people are still being kicked off the application.
> > Many people's sessions seem to timeout in only a few minutes. Others
> > however seem to last an hour or two (but not the full 360 minutes).
> >
> > Is there some way I can set this on IIS? Am I doing something wrong?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > -Tom
> >

Tom
Thu Jul 27 09:01:08 CDT 2006

Tom Cat wrote:
> David Wang [Msft] wrote:
> > If IIS6 -
> >
> > http://blogs.msdn.com/david.wang/archive/2005/09/19/Why_do_I_lose_ASP_Session_State_on_IIS6.aspx
> >
>
> Thanks. That was very interesting. If I understand what he's saying,
> I need to set the recycle timeout to 1440 or higher... Only problem is
> that it has been set to 1740. That's the only one of the recycle
> checkboxes I have checked.
>

I did this and the next day we still have the problem. I suspect it
was b/c I made the change around 10am and the 24hr ended at 10am which
caused everyone to get kicked off the next day around 10am.

So I went with this plan:

> I only need the sessions to last during work hours (8am-5pm). Would
> using the "Recycle processes at the following times" checkbox be the
> best way to do this. I'd have them recycle at 7:30 and 5:30?
>

However just a little while ago (at 8:35am) someone was logged off.
About the same time another user reported a "trappable error" and had
to also log back into the application.

Not sure what to do at this point, I went back into the application
pool and played with some settings. This time under the performance
tab, I unchecked all of the boxes about idle process timeout and kernel
request limits. I also unchecked CPU monitoring.

I was going to increase the web garden setting from 1 but then I reread
the link and decided to leave it alone since it seems to mix up
sessions when above 1.

So now I'm left with waving dead chickens around and praying to the
computer gremlins in hope that this will work. Can anyone tell me if
I'm on the right track to fixing this problem and what else I need to
do.

Thanks.

> > --
> > //David
> > IIS
> > http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
> > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
> > //
> >
> > "Tom Cat" <stry_cat@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:1153766422.205180.46250@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > >I have some ASP scripts which use sessions. In the scripts, I've set
> > > the Session.Timeout = 360 and in IIS, I've gone into the application
> > > pool and set every possible timeout to 360 minutes (or as high as I can
> > > set it in seconds).
> > >
> > > My problem is that people are still being kicked off the application.
> > > Many people's sessions seem to timeout in only a few minutes. Others
> > > however seem to last an hour or two (but not the full 360 minutes).
> > >
> > > Is there some way I can set this on IIS? Am I doing something wrong?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance,
> > >
> > > -Tom
> > >