Fix Authelia remember_me not actually keeping sessions alive

inactivity (idle timeout) was independent of remember_me and stayed at a
much shorter default (2h), so a long remember_me got silently overridden
by ordinary daily gaps between visits. install_authelia()'s template now
defaults inactivity to match remember_me, and the "Change remember me
duration" menu option now writes both keys together instead of just one.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0148pWopbt3tEKZWHYuHTb3c
This commit is contained in:
Claude
2026-09-08 22:43:20 +00:00
parent 39387b5e0f
commit 2d82b2b278
2 changed files with 55 additions and 8 deletions
+20 -1
View File
@@ -623,6 +623,25 @@ in `services/authelia.sh`) — prompts for a new duration (`12h`, `7d`,
Sessions persist through reboots regardless of duration (Redis stores
session state in a volume).
**`inactivity` must track `remember_me`, or a long remember_me is a lie.**
`inactivity` is a separate session field — how long a session can sit idle
before Authelia ends it — and it is NOT extended or bypassed by the
"Remember me" checkbox; the two are independent. Confirmed live: a user
set `remember_me: 1y` expecting "won't be asked to log in again for a
year," but the install default left `inactivity` at a much shorter value
(2h at the time), so ordinary daily gaps between visits (overnight, a
workday) ended the session on inactivity grounds well before remember_me
ever came into play — the 1y setting was doing nothing. Fixed at both ends
so this can't recur silently: `install_authelia()`'s own template now sets
`inactivity: 7d`, matching its `remember_me: 7d` default instead of a
shorter one, and `_authelia_set_remember_me()` now writes the SAME new
duration into both keys on every change, not just `remember_me` alone. If
you ever hand-edit `session:` instead of using the menu option, keep
`inactivity` and `remember_me` equal — a mismatch here is exactly the bug
above, not a valid intentional configuration. `expiration` (the cap for a
session that never checked "Remember me") is a legitimately different,
shorter-by-design setting and is untouched by any of this.
**The config key is `remember_me`, not `remember_me_duration`.** Authelia
renamed it in 4.38; this repo pins `4.39.20`. A stale `remember_me_duration`
key doesn't error, Authelia just silently ignores it — confirmed against
@@ -635,7 +654,7 @@ touch this by hand instead of the menu option, the current schema is:
session:
secret: 'your-existing-secret'
expiration: 1h
inactivity: 5m
inactivity: 1y
remember_me: 1y
cookies:
- domain: 'example.com'