sessions maybe dropped / how to view session count

[Scott Cantor]

> On Jul 8, 2026, at 5:26 PM, Simon Leary via users <users at shibboleth.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello shibboleth users,
> 
> I am trying to troubleshoot an issue where users are forced to sign in again with SSO, long before the session lifespan or timeout could be reached. Based on user feedback, it seems that this might be happening only when the SP is under heavy load. Is it possible that shibd has an upper limit on the number of sessions, which could cause older sessions to end early?

No. The reason is generally in the logs (when the right ones are examined), and it is usually simply IP address changes invalidating sessions because networking is so fundamentally broken by NAT and proxies.

The in process log (now syslog or Windows' event log by default) contains those warnings when they occur.

> I would like to find out the number of sessions that are currently open. I discovered that there is a `https://localhost/Shibboleth.sso/Status` page, but it doesn't have much of any useful information.

That is a matter of opinion, but it does not have that, no. I'm not sure how a count would be material to anything.

> I also haven't been able to find any sign of sessions on the filesystem.

They're in memory by default (and in all practical scenarios, the other options are largely unstable).

-- Scott