Debian based systems Session killed at 30 minutes in special cron, how to override?

Edit the file /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime

The value should be in seconds. This file will actually also check your php.ini so I don't know why it wasn't working for you.

This is a question for serverfault.com.

However, change session.gc_maxlifetime in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini or - if you don't have an apache2 one - one of the other /etc/php5/*/php.ini files. The script /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime will then use the maximum for that setting found in any of those files.

Editing maxlifetime won't help or at least only until the php5-common package is updated again.

You can provide your own session path session.save_path OR use a different handler altogether session.save_handler

You'll however need to provide appropriate mechanism for managing unwanted session files.

Found this in my php.ini

; NOTE: If you are using the subdirectory option for storing session files;       (see session.save_path above), then garbage collection does *not*;       happen automatically.  You will need to do your own garbage;       collection through a shell script, cron entry, or some other method.;       For example, the following script would is the equivalent of;       setting session.gc_maxlifetime to 1440 (1440 seconds = 24 minutes):;          cd /path/to/sessions; find -cmin +24 | xargs rm

I recently ran into this problem where unwanted session files were accumulating because I was using PHP and mod_fcgid with a custom session.save_path for each virtualhost.