Increase the phpMyAdmin Session Timeout

phpMyAdmin is one of my favorite tools and I use it all the time. But man, the 30-minute session timeout is a huge PITA. A short cookie lifetime is all well and good on your production server, but what about when you’re just hacking away on the computer in your bedroom?

Did a little grepping and found that you can override this setting, even though it’s not documented anywhere but in teh 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):

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

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

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.