Session timeout is not working while using SqlServer mode - asp.net

I am developing ASP.Net MVC application.
We have used sessionState mode SQLServer and i have set timeout to 20 minutes.
<sessionState mode="SQLServer"
sqlConnectionString="data source=127.0.0.1;user id=sa;password=sa"
cookieless="false"
timeout="2" />
Code is something like this in web config.
I have also set login page.
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl="~/Account/Login" timeout="2880" />
</authentication>
Now when session expires i want to navigate user to login page.
I checked many things but i was unable to understand how it exactly works? and how can i navigate user login page on session expire?
It is working in InProc mode. I used it in same way and user is redirected to login on session expire.
But i am unable to accomplish same thing in SQLServer Mode.
I am unable to understand what i am missing?
I checked Session State and also found that Session timeout handled in SQLServer Mode
Edit :-
I want to redirect user to login page whenever another http request is executed for that session.

Ordinarily the browser has no idea what is going on on the server. Unless an HTTP round trip occurs, it will remember the state of the session from when the page was rendered.
In addition, you session cookie is probably HttpOnly, so there is no way for the page to check for the presence of a session cookie.
One way to accomplish what you want is:
Add a hidden iFrame to your page. Set the SRC of the iFrame to a handler in your web site
The handler doesn't have to do much except return a 200 OK, plus a refresh header set to a few seconds, so that the handler gets continually polled.
context.Response.AddHeader("REFRESH", "2");
Add framebreaker code to your login page
if (top.location != location) {
top.location.href = document.location.href ;
}
When a request for the handler occurs with an expired session, it'll get redirected to the login page via forms authentication; when the login page is returned, it'll break your iFrame and redirect the full window to the login page.
Or, you can do what everyone else does, which is wait for the user to request another page.

For me, changing the timeout value in the web.config file to anything didn't take place, and the reason was there were somehow some leftover old records in the ASPStateTempSessions table in ASPState database. I had to empty the table and only then my web.config changes took place. I wasted an hour trying to search for the cause so hope this helps someone.
So, run this:
delete from ASPStateTempSessions

Difference between InProc and SQLServer mode is that SQLServer relies on MSSQL job to remove the session. It actively doesn't prevent you from login again.
See Session State Providers
SqlSessionStateStore doesn't actively monitor the Expires field. Instead, it relies on an external agent to scavenge the database and delete expired sessions—sessions whose Expires field holds a date and time less than the current date and time. The ASPState database includes a SQL Server Agent job that periodically (by default, every 60 seconds) calls the stored procedure DeleteExpiredSessions to remove expired sessions.

Related

ASP.NET MVC - Erasing session data after fer minutes of inactivity

In my web application, i often can see, that when i am not doing anything for a few minutes, and then i come back, and refresh the page - i am still being logged in, but my session data is all gone!
On the login() action i am setting up few Session[] objects that are necessary for a page to work correctly. I have no idea why is it doing so, but i need it to log user out whenever it clears his session data.
I have read about setting <sessionState mode="InProc" timeout="20"/> but will this timeout refresh everytime i refresh the page? Or will it run out after 20 minutes from the time i logged in? What if i make this timer bigger than i have on keeping the user online?
Posting back to the server will keep the session alive for longer. It's a sliding expiration. There are two ways to handle from the client, which the client is not aware of this 20 minute timeout:
Create a timer using client javascript that redirects to the logout page when 20 minutes is hit
Whenever a postback happens, check if the session expired (which can be done in a variety of ways, such as checking Session.IsNewSession, see if your objects are lost, etc.) and then redirect to the logout handler before processing the request.
I assume you are using Forms Authentication. Is that correct? If so, you need to have your Forms Authentication ticket's timeout match the Session timeout.
The user stays logged in through a process that is more complicated than it first seems. A cookie is stored in the user's browser that is called the Forms Authentication Ticket. If the user stays idle past the session timeout limit, the server will discard the session. But on the next request, the Forms Authentication Ticket is passed back to the web server. The server validates the ticket, and if it is still valid, the user is logged back in.
As you can see, the user's session is not restored. If you want that behavior, you would have to detect that condition and restore the session yourself.
The solution is to set the Forms Authentication Ticket's timeout to be the same as the Session timeout. You accomplish that in your Web.config file, as explained here:
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms timeout="20"/>
</authentication>
</system.web>
The timeout value is in minutes. Once the Forms Authentication Ticket's timeout is hit, the user will be logged out. This operates independent from the session's timeout, but if they are the same, they will expire at roughly the same time. If you want to be completely safe, set the Forms Authentication Ticket timeout to be a little shorter than the session timeout. The user will be logged out before their session times out. When they log in again, they will get a new session. The old session will eventually time out on its own.
Try checking this:
Q: In Proc mode, why do I lose all my session occasionally?
A: Please see the "Robustness" section in the "Understanding session
state modes" section of of this article.
Robustness
InProc - Session state will be lost if the worker process
(aspnet_wp.exe) recycles, or if the appdomain restarts. It's because
session state is stored in the memory space of an appdomain. The
restart can be caused by the modification of certain config files such
as web.config and machine.config, or any change in the \bin directory
(such as new DLL after you've recompiled the application using VS) For
details, see KB324772. In v1, there is also a bug that will cause
worker process to restart. It's fixed in SP2 and in v1.1. See
KB321792.
Source - http://forums.asp.net/t/7504.aspx/1

Issues related to Session state off

In my web config I have session state off
<sessionState mode="Off" />
When I run my application I am seeing ASP.net_sessionid cookie being generated with expiration expiration "When I close my browser".
1 .How this cookie is generated if my session state is off?
How can I change the session timeout in this case (when session state is off)?
What is the relation between session timeout and the ASP.net_sessionid cookie expiry time?
If my session state is off will my Session End event in Global.asax.cs fire?
My guess is that the browser is displaying a cached version of the page. If it is IE check Tools - Options - General - Browsing History and click on the "Settings" button. Make sure that "Check for newer versions of stores pages" is set to "Every time I visit the webpage".

ASP.Net MVC: Session duration?

Due to the complex business logic, I had to implement myself the authentication. I'm storing the authentication with:
FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(identifier,false);
The False is to indicate that we don't want to have persistent cookie
I've to also store in session some informations(one information that the user has to enter to login, indicating for which set of data he wants to access).
I'm storing those data through model binder.
It's working fine most of the time. But sometime after an inactivity period, we are still logged but we don't have any data in session.
I would like that the duration of my session is the same than the login session, to avoid this kind of "I'm logged but I've lost some data in the session".
I don't need/want to have a persistent connection.
How should I proceed to have this system?
I believe the FormsAuthentication uses its own timeout. You can configure your web.config accordingly:
<system.web>
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms timeout="50"/>
</authentication>
<sessionState timeout="50" />
</system.web>
In fact, There was a Session timeout by default in the IIS Application pool, so, to avoid this problem:
Go on IIS Manager
Go on the ServerName/Application Pools tab
Right click on the concerned application pool
Click on Advanced Settings,
In the section "Process Model", put an higher value in the "Idle Time-out"(this is in minutes
Click on OK
Restart the application pool
For me, this + the Yannis config(setting the same value for the form timeout+session state timeout) worked.

Strange logging off on ASP.NET 3.5 website

Please help me I'm getting desperate here trying to find the problem, and I don't know where to start looking for it.
Here are the symptoms:
I've noticed, that when a user logs on in the morning, he is then immediately logged off, then when he logs on again, everything is fine and he can work on the site.
Every once in a while, when the user clicks a link, the page takes a lot of time to load, but it never actually loads, and the user is thrown to the login page.
Also, after an Exception has occurred in the website, the user is then thrown to the login page. It's as if the exception clears somehow the session.
Do any of you know of a situation where this might happen ?
The code I use in every page in my application is as follows :
If (Not User.Identity.IsAuthenticated) Then
Response.Redirect("../login2.aspx")
End If
' If session timeout then return to login screen '
If ((Session("LocationId") Is DBNull.Value) Or (Session("LocationId") Is Nothing))
Then
Response.Redirect("../login2.aspx")
End If
The code in the web.config:
<sessionState cookieless="false" timeout="600" />
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms timeout="600" />
<system.web>
<authorization>
<allow users="*"/>
</authorization>
</system.web>
Why are you using that code in every page?
.NET authorization and authentication normally takes care of all those things if you have it set up correctly.
Related to this scenario *`
".... after an Exception has occurred
in the website, the user is then
thrown to the login page. It's as if
the exception clears somehow the
session
I know of one possible situation where it may occur.
It is far fetched especially in a production scenaio for multiple reasons but i have seen it happen :-)
If the session is In Memory and logging is done by writing to a log file that is in the Bin directory of the application, then this may occur as modifying the bin folder of the web application results in the application restarting i.e the in memory session getting lost.
Just one possible scenario. If your session is not in Memory OR your logging mechanism isnt like this, then this doesnt apply to you.
I am turning to all the dot net experts out there because I am really desperate,
let me give another symptom of the problem because it still persists,
the server is a very strong server - intel xeon with a 3 gb ram, so it is probably not a problem of resources.
When the user uses the system continuously there is no problem and she can work freely, the problem arises when the user leaves the computer (or the application for that matter) for as long as 5 minutes, then when she wants to continue working and clicks a link in the application she is thrown to the login page. when she tries to login again, she succeeds, but after she clicks another link, she is thrown out again, then when she logins she can work freely and everything is fine.
Somehow the session is being cleared when the site is idle. let me emphasize that this doesn't happen when I run the app in visual studio, only in iis.
The app was converted from asp.net 2.0 to 3.5,
that's it, thanks
First of all, you need to deny access for non-authenticated (anonymous) users:
<authorization>
<deny users="?" />
</authorization>
Have you configured default and login pages?
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms name=".ASPXFORMSAUTH" loginUrl="Login.aspx" defaultUrl="Default.aspx" slidingExpiration="true" timeout="30" />
</authentication>
name sets the name of a cookie, useful if you will use .NET 2.0 built-in security infrastructure (roles, membership, etc)
slidingExpiration enabled normal timeout behavior - any user action resets timeout
If you are just using the normal session functionality in asp.net I believe that the session times out after 15-30 minutes of inactivity (I typically don't use session so I remember it is somewhere in this range). Every postback to the server resets this timer so if a user is active doing things then they won't hit this time out.
For the page taking a long time to load it is most likely due to the worker process recycling and that user is the first user to access the site after a recycle which triggers IIS to do all of it's compilation stuff and then serve the page which causes the delay. This only happens for the first visitor after a worker process recycle. You can change this behavior in IIS to happen on a schedule rather than after a certain amount of time has passed without activity. This will cause your worker process to take up more memory though so depending on your environment this might not be a good change to make.
EDIT: I should add that the code you posted explains exactly why the user is kicked back to the login page. It is checking to make sure that there is something in the session and if there isn't anything there it kicks the user back to the login page. So if they are inactive for too long your session times out, so it is cleared, and the user is kicked back to the login page by your code. Also you should use FormsAuthentication.RedirectToLoginPage(); for your redirect instead of Response.Redirect. This way after logging in they go back to the page they requested originally.

asp.net sessions lost when the page is reloaded (ispostback = false)

I have a really strange problem to do with session variables.
I have an asp.net page that sets a few session variables. On my development machine (localhost), I do a postback and the session values are still populated.
When I Reload the page by clicking on the url bar and pressing enter the session variables are still there.
However when i deploy this page to a webserver, the page still retains the session values when doing a postback, but as soon as i click the url and press enter the session values are lost (where the ispostback = false)
But when i press the refresh button the session variables are present (but i do get a popup warning me that the page data needs to be resent!)
i am running IE 7, and the webserver is iis6 what am i doing wrong?!
please help x
What session state provider are you using? The default is InProc, whereby sessions are stored in the asp.net worker process. This means session state can be lost if the application pool is recycled or the webserver is low on memory. You could try using StateServer mode, whereby sessions are stored in a separate service running on the server. You can change the mode in web.config eg.
<system.web>
<sessionState mode="StateServer" />
</system.web>
See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307598
Sounds like the webserver is not configured to use session state.
Make sure your web.config has the correct <sessionState> section, with the mode being InProc:
<sessionState mode="InProc" />

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