Error 500 on godaddy linux server

[juronimo]

I'm relatively new to the PHP development environment and I have virtually 0 Linux experience as I come from a Microsoft background, both in administration and development.

At any rate, I have modified an already existing PHP/MySQL based web site which contains a login with session variables. When a user logs in, they get intermittent 500 errors. However, if users go to any of the content pages, there are no errors, only on the interactive section that requires a login.

Has anyone experienced this and how do you go about troubleshooting it? I cannot reproduce the error on my PC and I tested the program on my own ISP hosting account and it works fine in both environments. Both of those environments are windows/IIS but the production site is on linux/apache.

Here is an approximation of what the beginning section of the interactive pages look like.

ini_set('session.cache_limiter', 'private');
ob_start();
include('../include/config.php'); //for database variables
session_start();
session_register("variable1");
session_register("variable2");
session_register("variable3");
$variable3 = $_SESSION['variable3'];
require '../include/connection.php'; //database connection

At the end I have this

<?
ob_end_flush();
?>

I then import the content of the pages by using this line:

<? include 'pages/'.$page_name.'.php'; ?>

If someone can give me some troubleshooting pointers, I'd much appreciate it. So far godaddy has been of little help, I want to get a hold of the server logs to see if I can pinpoint the problem.

[NogDog]

You probably should not be using session_register. See all the Notes/Cautions on the manual page: http://www.php.net/session_register

[bradgrafelman]

I would also suggest using the full <?php ?> tags instead of the short-tags.

[juronimo]

I read the links provided and I commented out the session_register commands. It didn't have any affect as far as the server errors. Some other sources have told me that the problems are being cause due to the web site being on a shared server and multiple web sites are competing for the resources of one server.

We will probably end up upgrading to a dedicated host to boost performance.

On a side note, can someone direct me to an article or any other articles regarding managing session state, specifically how to make a session time out after a certain amount of time?

Thanks.

[NogDog]

The session.cookie_lifetime parameter in php.ini (or overridden by a .htaccess entry) will determine the default lifetime of your session cookies (the default installation value is "0", which means "until the browser is closed"). You can override this on a per script basis with the session_set_cookie_params() function.