Deleting old session files from custom set session folder?

Question

Using PHP, if I set a custom session folder to store session files, what must I do to make sure that old session files eventually get deleted? Is there a way to have Apache or PHP handle this for me, or do I need to set something up to clean this folder out myself? Any information on this subject is greatly appreciated.

I am currently using session_save_path() to change the session folder if that makes a difference.

Answer 1

As long as you don't use the N; option on php's session.save_path setting, PHP will auto-clean stale sessions according to the session.gc_probability / session.gc_divisor / session.max_lifetime settings

If you've rolled your own session handlers, you'll be responsible for the cleanup.

Answer 2

Yes, you need to manually clean them up because you've setup your own session save path . (Today it's said it's for the split directory option only, but I have servers where this is still needed even not using that feature but using a custom session save path and it's some PHP 5.2.x and I need to manually clean.)

You can check the age of a file and delete if it's older than x days/minutes whatever:

cd /path/to/sessions; find -cmin +24 | xargs rm

Taken from the note part of 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

See as well this related/duplicate question: cleanup php session files

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"Single" command:

find /path/to/session -name sess_* -cmin +24 -exec rm {} \;

Answer 3

You will need to periodically clean custom PHP sessions directory. You can run a CRON job to handle the answer by @hakre

We use Plesk and it has a handy CRON/Task manager under Tools & Settings > Scheduled Tasks. You can create a new task and run a script/command at set intervals.

Another point is that it is quite good to run custom session paths if you are on a shared server or the session directory is shared with other sites/resourses.

I'm posting this here as the answer/topic was useful and I've not found much advice online for custom PHP session_path