Silex: Set firewalls session lifetime - symfony

Question

I'm trying to extend the default lifetime once a user logs in. For the login I'm using the security service provider as follows:
$app = $this->_app;
$this->_app->register(new Silex\Provider\SecurityServiceProvider(), array(
'security.firewalls' => array(
'default' => array(
'pattern' => '^.*$',
'anonymous' => true, // Needed as the login path is under the secured area
'form' => array('login_path' => '/signup/', 'check_path' => 'login_check', 'failure_path' => 'login_failure'),
'logout' => array('logout_path' => '/logout/'), // url to call for logging out
'users' => $this->_app->share(function() use ($app)
{
// Specific class App\User\UserProvider is described below
return new UserProvider($app['db']);
}),
),
),
'security.access_rules' => array(
array('^/restricted/$', 'ROLE_USER'),
)
));
I've tried setting up with the sessions lifetime (cookie) like this:
$this->_app->register(new Silex\Provider\SessionServiceProvider(), array(
'session.storage.options' => array('cookie_lifetime' => (60 * 60 * 12)), // 12 hours
));
But still nothing. Session removes itself after like 15 minutes or so.
How can I extend the login security firewall lifetime to 12 hours?

Answer 1

I think I finally got it working:
Saving sessions in database seemed to solve the problem.
SQL:
CREATE TABLE `session` (
`session_id` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`session_value` text NOT NULL,
`session_time` int(11) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
PHP:
/* SESSION IN DB */
$this->_app->register(new Silex\Provider\SessionServiceProvider());
$this->_app['session.db_options'] = array(
'db_table' => 'session',
'db_id_col' => 'session_id',
'db_data_col' => 'session_value',
'db_time_col' => 'session_time',
);
$this->_app['session.storage.handler'] = $this->_app->share(function ()
{
return new PdoSessionHandler(
$this->_app['db']->getWrappedConnection(), $this->_app['session.db_options'], $this->_app['session.storage.options']
);
});

Answer 2

Here is a solution if you don't want to store sessions in DB: just increase session.gc_maxlifetime in php.ini.
When sessions are being stored in files, they (by default) get put to /var/lib/php/sessions/ directory. It's clear that this directory has to be cleared from time to time. In order to achieve this, there is a cron job configured at /etc/cron.d/php5 that fires script /usr/lib/php5/sessionclean every 30 minutes. This script takes php config and gets session.gc_maxlifetime from there and then removes files that are older than what is specified in this variable.
The problem is: by default session.gc_maxlifetime equals to 1440 seconds or 24 minutes. You can increase it to whatever value suits you, for instance to 24 hours (and limit your sessions by session cookie lifetime).