Jira: user session timed out too quickly

[Anthony Kong]

I am trying out jira 4.4.1 in redhat 2.6.9-67.ELhugemem (32bit)

I found that my users' session are timed out after a very short time (1 min?)

How can I increase the timeout?

[Radu Dumitriu · Accepted solution]

Psst: <session-timeout> is in minutes. Your JIRA sess timeout is still 300 minutes (5 hours). [BTW, default is 30 minutes] since the application web.xml takes precedence over the server-wide settings.

Are you sure this is the problem ? It doesn't look like it ... Check the logs, please ....

[Anthony Kong]

Yeah, I was wondering to myself as well. Where is the log location?

I notice the adminstator login expire pretty quickly. Is there anyway to change it?

[Radu Dumitriu]

Default: JIRA_HOME/logs/atlassian-jira.log

[Anthony Kong]

Think there was a confusion of admin login vs normal login. Admin login session expires rather quickly, but it is not an issue.

[Gavin Fowler]

Hi Tony.

1 minutes doesn't sound right - i think the default (standalone installation) is 60 minutes. This may be a symptom of another issue, but first you ashoudl check web.xml. Here's a link to the offcial documentation on session timeout: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Changing+the+default+session+timeout

[Anthony Kong]

in conf/web.xml it is 30

in ./atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/web.xml it is 300.

I will modify the conf/web.xml

[IT Dept]

This resolved our issue. After upgrading we realized the web.xml in the /jira/conf/ directory was only set to 30 natively, but the one ins /WEB-INF/ was set to 300. I assume the lower number will take precedence. 

[Sysad]

A quick tip for users in 2019 

If any of the installations are data center editions and on AWS, I suggest to update the following:

Update timeout in the following three places and make sure timeout number matches in all 3

1. /conf/web.xml
2. /WEB-INF/web.xml
3. Sticky session on ALB Target group(if you are using AWS infra)

[Andrew Walters]

Hi Pelle,

Since I logged in ticking the "Remember me" box, I remained logged in but had to reauthenticate every 10 seconds when doing any admin functions, and some form submissions had to be repeated.

In my case, the above linked article had me try the JSESSIONID -> JIRASESSIONID fix - this was the only change I made - and it solved both problems.

[Andrew Walters]

I found this which may be relevant:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Logging+into+Another+Atlassian+Application+Logs+Me+Out+of+Confluence

[pkirkeby]

Hey Tony,

If this is just the admin session that needs to re-authenticate, I'm wondering if this is the websudo kicking in?:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Configuring+Secure+Administrator+Sessions

You can disable or change the timeout if that's the case.