Can Laravel big amount of session files use lot of cpu?

Question

I have Laravel 4.2 version in the server. There was a problem that there were high CPU usage, like 98%-100% very often. And also php5-fpm server was not working from time to time giving 502 Bad gateway error.

I noticed that there were 450 000 session files in the sessions folder.

Can this be using that much CPU and cause php5-fpm server stop working? And why? Aren't file names like indexes which should give fast file search?

Another question - why Laravel does not delete old session files? There was a setting to session lifetime to one month. But we definitely do not have 450 000 users so each would need unique session file in one month. There are like 20 unique users only.

Other session settings are default, only lifetime - one month and

'cookie' => 'laravel_session_4',

Answer 1

Please check config/session.php and lifetime, expires_on_close and lottery values. By playing with these you should be able to reduce number of session files.