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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
10642Bug reportsSurvey takingpublic2016-03-02 16:45
Reportermfreund Assigned Toc_schmitz  
PrioritynormalSeverityfeature 
Status closedResolutionunable to reproduce 
Summary10642: "Session expired" error for users taking survey
Description

I have been getting reports from multiple individuals taking a survey that after filling out a long survey page, when they click Next they are getting some sort of error message saying that the survey timed out and cookies not being enabled. In the process, their responses from that page are not recorded (although previous pages are).

This seems to be happening somewhat randomly. Almost all of the respondents are within the same company, so I assume that their client-side security settings would be identical, yet some are affected but others are not. In my results, the timing statistics indicate some people who have taken up to hundreds of minutes on particular survey groups, but were apparently able to submit their responses without a problem. A couple of the survey groups are rather long, but this does not explain the intermittent nature of the error.

I have used LS for years on this same server and have never heard of this error. To my knowledge, the only thing that has changed is my most recent update to LS 2.06+ Build 160129.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to reproduce the problem on my own browser, but it seems that numerous other LS users have had the same error. Here are a couple of the posts on the forum:
https://www.limesurvey.org/forum/installation-a-update-issues/103522-session-expired-message-after-latest-upgrade
https://www.limesurvey.org/forum/design-issues/100516-session-expiring-right-at-the-beginning

It's odd that the second of those posts is from 8 months ago, which seems to indicate the problem may go back farther.

This is proving very problematic for my respondents. I hope it can be tracked down and fixed soon!

Additional Information

Full survey in question is attached. Please delete if not useful for troubleshooting purposes.

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c_schmitz

c_schmitz

2016-03-02 16:45

administrator   ~35840

I am sorry but session timeout errors are in general a problem of the server configuration.

A possible scenario would be for example an application on the same webspace using the same session save directory which reduces the session lifetime.
It would appear to be spontaneous, not caused by LimeSurvey and happens irregular.
An option is always to switch to database based sessions. Please use the forums for further questions - thank you!

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2016-03-02 01:11 mfreund New Issue
2016-03-02 01:11 mfreund File Added: limesurvey_survey_594476.lss
2016-03-02 16:36 DenisChenu Project Feature requests => Bug reports
2016-03-02 16:45 c_schmitz Note Added: 35840
2016-03-02 16:45 c_schmitz Status new => closed
2016-03-02 16:45 c_schmitz Assigned To => c_schmitz
2016-03-02 16:45 c_schmitz Resolution open => unable to reproduce