How to Increase PhpMyAdmin Session Timeout from 1440 seconds


phpMyAdmin is one of my favorite tools and I use it all the time. But man, the 24-minute session timeout is a huge problem . A short cookie lifetime is all well and good on your production server, but what about when you’re just testing new things  away on the computer in your test envirnment?
Did a little grepping and found that you can override this setting, even though it’s not documented anywhere but in the codes (so far as I can tell). To override it, just open up config.inc.php in the root phpMyAdmin directory and add this setting (anywhere, but  mostly at end of file):
phpmyadmin config file for ubuntu Server : /etc/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = <your_new_timeout>;

Where <your_new_timeout> is some number larger than 1800. Personally, I chose 28800, which is 8 hours.

Define how long a login cookie is valid. Please note that php configuration option session.gc_maxlifetime might limit session validity and if the session is lost, the login cookie is also invalidated. So it is a good idea to set session.gc_maxlifetime at least to the same value of $cfg['LoginCookieValidity'].
php.ini file for ubuntu Server : /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Disclaimer! It should go without saying that increasing the timeout is a (comparatively minor) security risk (but a risk nonetheless). Obviously, do not do this on your production server. And as always, proceed with caution.

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