what could cause 41000 session files to be created over the past few days?

it caused me to hit my total file limit allowed and the server starts truncating other files.... like my config file.....

What version are you running? On some servers with 7.2.x and prior the session files would accumulate. I believe it was Zarzal that found the issue which we patched up for 7.3.

I am using 7.3.1

Hmm, in that case, is this your server or a hosted server? If it's your own, you'll want to take a look at the php.ini file and check to make sure the garbage collection area is set properly.

A site I worked on recently had this turned off in their php.ini for some reason so PHP was never clearing out the session files.

it's on a hosted server, they told me I need to set up a cron job to clean out the sessions files periodically... of course, I have never messed with cron stuff so have no idea how to do that.