my SESSION variables are mysteriously dying

bharb22

I have written a PHP frontend to a mySQL DB. i wrote my own auth. i'm storing 3 session variables which i validate each time a page loads. I developed the whole thing on OS X 10.3.8 (PHP 4.3.10). Everything works beautifully. i've tested every user function, every layout, every DB call. All work fine.

Here's the problem:

When i uploaded the site to the production server (Red Hat w/ PHP 4.3.2), my session variables are being unset somewhere. I have one part of the site where i load a record into a form, allow the user to make changes and put the info back into the DB. after this event, in the 'x records were changed' dialog, the 'ok' button i build sends them to the 'you aren't logged in' message that i have on each page (if the session variables are busted). i am essentially being logged out and have to start over at the login screen.

i've used 'tail' to watch the apache error and access logs...nothing useful came of that. i've scanned through the php.ini and conf files and didn't see anything weird, but maybe i just don't know where to look. FWIW, it doesn't seem to be a timeout issue. i'm not timing anything out at this point. i can force this issue to appear whether i've been logged in for 2 minutes or 2 days. it also appears on every browser i've tried (mac only: Safari, Firefox, IE, Mozilla...users of this site are mac only)

anyone have any ideas?

TIA-
Billy

devinemke

what method of session propagation are you using: cookies or trans_id? if you are using using cookies, it sounds like perhaps your session.cookie_lifetime setting in your php.ini is set to something other than 0.

bharb22

i'm not manually setting a cookie (a la setcookie()). i'm just loading stuff into SESSION like this

////load local variables into session variables
$_SESSION['userID'] = $userIDfromForm;
$_SESSION['password'] = sha1($studentIDfromForm);		
$_SESSION['valid_login'] = "true";

the session.cookie_lifetime in php.ini is set to 0.

thx.
Billy

sysera

Originally posted by bharb22
i'm not manually setting a cookie (a la setcookie()). i'm just loading stuff into SESSION like this
////load local variables into session variables
$_SESSION['userID'] = $userIDfromForm;
$_SESSION['password'] = sha1($studentIDfromForm);		
$_SESSION['valid_login'] = "true";
the session.cookie_lifetime in php.ini is set to 0.

thx.
Billy [/B]

Does each page contain the session start?

session_start();

bharb22

yep. each page has session_start(); ... remember this whole site/system works on another box
:bemused: it just breaks on the production server.

thx.
Billy

sysera

Originally posted by bharb22
yep. each page has session_start(); ... remember this whole site/system works on another box
:bemused: it just breaks on the production server.

thx.
Billy

I ask because I moved my project site from a local machine to another server as well, and this same thing happened. I believe an include on one page (it may have been the include for "Who's logged in", didn't contain the session start and all hell broke loose. Don't forget to check those includes. 🙂