Persistent Forced Logouts (Session Expiration) on Grafana 10.2.6 with Local Auth

Grafana Configuration
1

Hello,

I am experiencing a recurring and frustrating issue with my Grafana installation and would appreciate advice or confirmation from other users who have faced something similar.

At apparently random intervals (sometimes after hours, sometimes after days), Grafana forces a logout across all open browser windows and tabs, even though there has been no system reboot or manual logout. When this happens, all dashboards disappear and I am redirected to the login page. After logging in again, I need to manually reopen each dashboard across three monitors, which takes considerable time and disrupts our workflow.

I have already tried modifying the session-related parameters in /etc/grafana/grafana.ini under [auth] and then restarting the Grafana service. My current configuration includes the following lines:

[auth]
login_maximum_inactive_lifetime_duration = 365d
login_maximum_lifetime_duration = 365d
token_rotation_interval_minutes = 525600

Despite these settings, the forced logouts continue to occur periodically.

My goal is to achieve a stable, uninterrupted display setup where Grafana dashboards remain permanently visible on office monitors, without being disrupted by session expirations or forced logouts.

If anyone has managed to reliably disable or extend session lifetimes under local authentication, I would greatly appreciate your suggestions or examples of working configurations.

Setup details:

  • Grafana version: 10.2.6 (installed via RPM package grafana-10.2.6-15.el9_6.x86_64)

  • Operating system: AlmaLinux 9.6 (5.14.0-570.52.1.el9_6.x86_64)

  • Authentication: Local user/password (no LDAP, no OAuth)

  • Installation type: System package (systemd service)

  • Usage: Multiple dashboards permanently displayed across three monitors

Thank you in advance for any insights or recommendations.

2

Are you sure that’s not a browser/network related issue?

3

Hi @jangaraj ,

I don’t think this is network-related, the machine is connected via a wired Ethernet connection, and there are no signs of connectivity drops.

As for the browser, I’m using the latest version of Safari (26.0). I wouldn’t expect session expiration behavior to depend on the browser, but if you think Safari might handle session cookies or tokens differently, I can try testing with another browser to verify.

Thanks for your reply, let me know if there are any further steps I can take to investigate this.

4

Many people think that, but they are not aware what they have installed in their browser (all those “useful” plugins/extensions/…). So first at least try vanilla browser (without any extensions, plugins), so only then you can confirm that’s not browser related.

Watch how Grafana cookies and their expiration are processed in the browser (learn how to use browser console for that).

Enable debug Grafana debug logs and check them. There can be some clue why Grafana is doing reauth, …

Try also Grafana upgrade. I would say your version is EOL.

6

Thanks for the detailed suggestions. I’ve just upgraded Grafana to version 12.2.1, so I’ll hold off for a while and see if the forced logout issue persists under this release.

If the problem occurs again, would you recommend enabling anonymous access, while limiting it only to specific dashboards used for display purposes?

Thanks again for your time and the helpful hints.