Hi 
We have an ongoing issue with our installations of 3.27.25.   I have 3 installations and get the same issue with all of them.
I keep getting reports from users that at the final submit they get a "Session Expired" message.  Although the submit has happened and I have the data.  

I have 2 servers one is Centos 8.2 Plesk Onyx but the one i'm focussing on is Centos 7.9 with Plesk Obsidian 
PHP 7.4 FastCGI, Apache and MariaDB.

However the same problem on both.   It seems to happen more when i'm running surveys with Participants and Tokens.  Although I do sometime get reports with anonymous surveys.

Reading the Plesk documentation it would seem there is a cron job running the clears the PHP sessions on the hour - which is extremely difficult to work round.  So i decided to change all my installations to use DB based sessions with a lifetime of 72000 (20 hours).    

This is the setting in the config file: 

I can confirm that the DB table _Sessions is being populated.
I have one survey that literally has 4 questions in to collect banking details - it takes about 3 minutes to complete.  

I have just changed the config a little to see if it makes a difference to:
PHP 7.4 FPM, nginx / Apache for Static files, MariaDB

Can any one suggest anything else that would solve the problem as this is driving me crazy.

Thanks in advance
Marc 
 

Hi Marc,

Without dbsession it's really more quick ?

marcgold wrote:

 they get a "Session Expired" message. 

 

What webserver concept is used? Under Plesk you often have Apache and NGINX in combination. NGINX as a reverse proxy on the same maschine and apache behind.
And when it comes to proxies LimeSurvey can be "interesting".
It would be interesting to have a screenshot or exact working of the "Session expired" error message.
 

Hi Jelo

When this was happening the server was setup as Apache Only PHP 7.4 FastCGI. this is the config that was causing the issue.

I only switched it today out of desperation TBH to Nginx PHP 7.4 FPM to see if it made a difference.

Unfortunately, I don't have an image of the timeouts, as my users are not sending them to me, just an email to say its happened. Apache Logs not giving much hints either.

Sorry

Hi Denis,

What do you mean. I shouldn't be using DB Sessions. Im really not experiencing a performance issue.

Just the issue of users getting the Session Expired message.

Marc

I wouldn't recommend to change to much till the diagnose is safe. You got all the responses and you have feedback from a few respondents that they get an expired message after submitting.  How long do you run these LimeSurvey installations?  Version 3.27.25 is from today, right? What version was running before?
Are you able to reproduce the issue with Firefox, Edge and Chrome?




 

Hi Jelo,

I hear you. and yes the update was applied today, prior was 3.27.22 or 23 but definitely in the 3.27 stream - I tend to upgrade point releases really quickly - especially as most are related to security.

Problem is I can't replicate the problem at all - from my desktop it works perfectly 100% of the time. But there are too many users reporting issues for it not to be a problem.

I have had a few emails with a slightly different error. 2 have reported that the system get to the end, and they then get the message "This invite has already been used". the entry is submitted and the user gets the confirmation email.

Maybe, this is what is meant by Limesurvey + NginX is strange

So I have switched back to Apache PHP7.4 FPM via Apache. That should solve this issue I hope.

Sorry - Just to add that the User that had this issue recently I called and Shes on an iPhone IOS 14 running Safari.

Sorry,
Missunderstanding the issue …

> I have one survey that literally has 4 questions in to collect banking details - it takes about 3 minutes to complete.

I think it's 3 minutes to load page …

Clearly : DBsession must be the solution and must work good.

A question : «nginx / Apache for Static files» : how you manage this ? You can not test with all in nginx ?

Hi Denis,

I have reverted the config to Apache - as per Jelo suggestions. So will monitor.

The questin still valid for usage of nginx and apache for static files.
You use apache for css and js only ? Or you use assets directory ?
Nginx need to move it to assets directory when assets is resetted.

Ok I See. So on Plesk - its not possible easily to disable Nginx for a single domain without de-installing Nginx. Unfortunately I have other sites running on this that work really well so the best I can hope for is Nginx in reverse proxy mode only.

So as Mentioned - LS is currently configured to be managed by Apache but Nginx is only acting as a reverse proxy - Apache is doing all the work and nginx is acting as a pass thru without modification.

Does this makes sense? Sorry, if this is getting off track.

But to get back to the issue - sessions are expiring before they should and causing users to have issues.