Mozilla 1.4 and session_start()

rabbitrun

Mozilla 1.4 doesn't display a simple PHP page when session_start() is called.

basic php page:

<?php
session_start();
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>title</title>
<body>
work please
</body>
</html>

If i take out the session_start(), then mozilla will display "work please".

Any ideas about session_start with mozilla?

dalecosp

And it does work with 1.5, Firebird, Opera, or MSIE?

What's your error reporting set to? Do other PHP scripts work with your Mozilla browser? What do the logs say? What about the HTML source?

rabbitrun

it works in Opera and IE....and when i do a view source...i don't get any content....

dalecosp

OK, that is a little bit of info that might help.

Mozilla has a more rigid cookie policy than IE.

What are your php.ini settings re: sessions?

I'm wondering if you're "use_only_cookies" and Mozilla's saying, "nope"....

Also, do you have access to the web server logs?

rabbitrun

Mozilla still does not work. I set the preferences to allow all cookies!!

Here are my session settings in my php ini:

session.save_handler = files
session.save_path = C:\PHP\sessiondata
session.use_cookies = 1
session.use_only_cookies = 0
session.name = PHPSESSID
session.auto_start = 0
session.cookie_lifetime = 0
session.cookie_path = /
session.cookie_domain =
session.serialize_handler = php
session.gc_probability = 1
session.gc_divisor = 100
session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440
session.bug_compat_42 = 1
session.bug_compat_warn = 1
session.referer_check =
session.entropy_length = 0
session.entropy_file =
session.cache_expire = 180
session.use_trans_sid = 0

AstroTeg

Have you checked Mozilla's cookie manager to make sure your cookie is getting set?

Mozilla -> Tools -> Cookie Manager -> Manage Stored Cookies -> scroll and find your web site's name and then check for all the cookies that are set. Look for PHPSESSID

If its set, then you have a PHP issue some where. If its not set, then there's an issue with how you're generating the session cookie or Mozilla is getting hung up on something.

You might also find "HTTP Live Headers" plugin rather valuable for testing. You can view the HTTP headers as they're being sent from your web server to your browser. You can look for the cookie data in the header and verify if your web server is actually sending the cookie out or not.

I was doing some session work over the weekend and was using Mozilla and I wasn't having any session/cookie problems. I need to check which version I'm on though. I'm thinking it might still be on v1.4. If not, I may have a PC that is still on v1.4 and I can test my code and see if it chokes...

rabbitrun

The cookie was set. The page doesn't display. In fact when I do a view source, there is nothing generated by PHP.

I'm just doing a very simple session_start().

Where do i get the Live HTTP header tool?

AstroTeg

Hmm... So if you're seeing PHPSESSID in the cookie manager, then thats half the battle.

For the page thats not displaying properly, can you post the code? I'm thinking there might be an issue with it somewhere...

AstroTeg

To get the Live Headers plugin, go to:

http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/installation.html

After you install it, you'll need to completely exit out of Mozilla. Restart it. And then go to: Tools -> Web Development -> HTTP Live Headers (or something named like that)

It'll bring up a dialog window and there's not too many options to play with, but you're welcome to tweak as you see fit. Then submit the form and watch the data. You'll be interested in watching your cookie info get passed around...

rabbitrun

Here is my amazing code that doesn't work in mozilla just to prove that I'm not going nuts over my other pages.

<?php
session_start();
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>title</title>
<body>
please display me in mozilla!!!
</body>
</html>

If I take out session_start(), then the page shows "please display me in mozilla!!!"

AstroTeg

I've got Mozilla v1.5 on a lot of my machines so I installed v1.4 on this one.

I've got Apache 1.3.29 running with PHP v4.3.3 on a Win98 box (strictly for testing and nothing else).

Taking your script exactly how it is and it comes up just fine in v1.4.

I doubt this would have any effect, but have you cleared the cache?

Can you reproduce this problem on another machine with v1.4? If yes, then there's an issue somewhere with your web server, PHP, or more likely the browser. If no, then there's an issue with your machine.

rabbitrun

I cleared the cache and it workeD!!

Thanks so much for your testing. I appreciate it.

I rebooted my machine several times and still that didn't work. It must be caching some page from two weeks ago. Anyways I set the cache size to 0MB.

AstroTeg

Hmm... I've found Mozilla is usually pretty well behaved when it comes to cached content.

I'm not sure if you use Mozilla as your everyday browser, but cache of size 0 is kinda extreme for every day use. I'm not sure if you know this, but a quick trick with Mozilla (and this works with IE too) is hold down the shift key and click the refresh button. This will force the browser to reload the page from the server.