Session Expiration Issue

[Hannah Meller]

Hello,

Has anyone experienced an issue of their ArchivesSpace session timing out every hour, on the hour? Nearly without fail (I can count the number of times this hasn't happened on one hand), our ArchivesSpace accounts get logged out once the time turns to a new hour.

We locally host ArchivesSpace. When raising the issue to the IT employee who manages our instance of ArchivesSpace, he noted that our AppConfig set value for session_expire_after_seconds is -1. When first trying to set up ArchivesSpace, all attempted logins were immediately timing out. Setting the value to -1 was the recommended workaround.

I imagine the -1 value is the source of our problem, but the member of IT does not recommend changing the value and re-introducing our login issue.

Has anyone dealt with this issue, or should I escalate this to Technical Support?

As a bonus issue, some of our systems (but not all, as of late, for an unknown reason) give us "the connection was reset" errors that can only be fixed by putting "https://" at the beginning of the ArchivesSpace url. This happens whenever jumping to one section of ArchivesSpace to another, such as the Resource List to opening a Resource or opening a Subject term page from a Resource record. The error is not springing from the web browser of choice or age or update status of the system we're using, as far as I can tell.  Our member of IT has not offered any theories for this issue.

Thank you,

Hannah Meller

She/Her

Associate Archivist | Albert Gore Research Center

Middle Tennessee State University

Office: (615) 898-5202

[Clair, Kevin]

Hi Hannah,

Sessions expiring after an hour is the default ArchivesSpace behavior. Our :session_expire_after_seconds has always been set to 3600 since that's what config.rb ships with. I've never encountered an issue with logins immediately timing out at either of my institutions (caveat: Penn State is hosted by LYRASIS and Denver was also a hosted instance while I was there), so to me it sounds like that's the technical support issue you have...  -k

---

kevin clair

digital collections archivist / interim head of collection services

eberly family special collections library

penn state university libraries

---

From: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org> on behalf of Hannah Meller <Hannah...@mtsu.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2026 11:08 AM
To: Archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <Archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] Session Expiration Issue

 

You don't often get email from hannah...@mtsu.edu. Learn why this is important

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Archivesspace_Users_Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Archivesspace_User...@lyrasislists.org.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/lyrasislists.org/d/msgid/Archivesspace_Users_Group/DM6PR02MB56734FF16D2E11007B2ADBB78E592%40DM6PR02MB5673.namprd02.prod.outlook.com.

[Blake Carver]

In addition to what Kevin said, that "the connection was reset"  error makes me think there's something wrong in your config.rb file. I've seen something like that cause the "POST /staff/update_monitor/poll" hits fail, and then you get bumped out. I suspect something like that is happening.  Make sure both the _proxy_url and _url settings are correct

https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/blob/master/common/config/config-defaults.rb#L29-L33

---

From: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org> on behalf of Clair, Kevin <km...@psu.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2026 11:18 AM
To: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] Re: Session Expiration Issue

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/lyrasislists.org/d/msgid/Archivesspace_Users_Group/IA1PR02MB9466DC9A1572901906209235B5592%40IA1PR02MB9466.namprd02.prod.outlook.com.

[Tessa Wakefield]

Hi Hannah,

We have been having the EXACT same issue since about September 2024 and can't figure out what's going on. We're also locally hosted and didn't have this issue our first two years using Aspace. Our timeouts range from within minutes to an hour. I can't offer much advice since we've been stuck but if you want, I can start an email with our IT person who has been working on it and cc you - he'd be able to at least tell you what we've tried.

We've been talking to Lyrasis a bit and my understanding is that our IT is going to try a new suggestion, so I can follow up with you with how that goes!

Thank you,

Tessa

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Archivesspace_Users_Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to Archivesspace_User...@lyrasislists.org.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/lyrasislists.org/d/msgid/Archivesspace_Users_Group/DM6PR02MB56734FF16D2E11007B2ADBB78E592%40DM6PR02MB5673.namprd02.prod.outlook.com.

--

Tessa Wakefield (she/her)

University Archivist & Special Collections Coordinator

University of Northern Iowa

Rod Library

319-273-2132

LIB 341  /  Cedar Falls, IA 50614

uni.edu  /  #1UNI

To schedule an appointment, please visit LibCal.

 

[Valerie Addonizio]

That other issue is making me wonder about timezone mismatches between the db and the application server? That’s a half-formed thought. 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/lyrasislists.org/d/msgid/Archivesspace_Users_Group/DM6PR22MB2309298B2E0B8E85FDD52CD99F592%40DM6PR22MB2309.namprd22.prod.outlook.com.

[Hannah Meller]

Hello everyone,

Thank you for the insight! It sounds like I need to get our IT in contact with Technical Support.

We've been locally hosting ArchivesSpace for a couple of years. When we got membership and I was searching in resources, I recommended we set our :session_expire_after_seconds to a value above 3600. That's when our IT contact reminded me about our earlier technical difficulties and the -1 setting.

Tessa, I'd appreciate that information. If you could loop in our IT contact, Jeff.M...@mtsu.edu, that would be great. He's better equipped to talk and compare technical details.

Valerie, I located the email from 2024 where our IT contact changed the setting to -1 and it was apparently implemented because of an issue with Daylight Savings Time in the config.rb file.

Thank you,

Hannah Meller

She/Her

Associate Archivist | Albert Gore Research Center

Middle Tennessee State University

Office: (615) 898-5202

---

From: Tessa Wakefield <tessa.w...@uni.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2026 10:30 AM
To: Hannah Meller <Hannah...@mtsu.edu>
Cc: Archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <Archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] Session Expiration Issue