Bug #13595 Updated: Solution for "PHP Fatal error: Unable to start session mm module in Unknown on

ID: 13595 Updated by: 2002@gabrielwicke.de Reported By: plafundum@yahoo.com Status: Analyzed Bug Type: Session related Operating System: Debian Sid PHP Version: 4.0.6 New Comment: I'm experiencing a similar problem after updating to php 4.1.0-104 (from the SUSE 8.0 Distro). Whenever i try to call php as a cgi ftp server i now get this: Content-type: text/html PHP Fatal error: Unable to start session mm module in Unknown on line 0 i did a locate .sem and it showed one file at /var/lib/httpd/mm.1257.sem. Deleting that didn't help. The ftp loader worked perfect with the previous version (4.0something), and the trouble with the new version appears only when calling php as cgi. Any ideas? Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-03-07 15:08:30] matt@mystile.com Yes, I had the save path explicitly set to '/dev/null' in php.ini since I first installed version 4.0.5; I haven't been using sessions, so I wouldn't have noticed if sessions were not working. However, after the upgrade, I sure noticed something was wrong, since apache wouldn't start. As for why it was setup that way... I have the server setup so each virtual host uses its own 'tmp' directory, and as I recall, I didn't want PHP to store anything in '/tmp'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-03-07 00:30:14] mfischer@php.net Ah .. interesting ... Did you set the save path explicitely to '/dev/null' ? (And if so, why?) All I know at the moment is that serveral session issues are adressed at the moment. Marking this as analyzed until one of our session gurus can answer this more accurat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-03-06 19:50:16] matt@mystile.com Thanks to mfischer@php.net, I found the problem using strace. I had 'session.save_path' set to '/dev/null'. Why does 4.1.2 not handle this gracefully like 4.0.5, and is there any way to get a more helpful error message in this case? In case you're interested in the exact errors, I've included the errors from the strace below: unlink("/dev/null/session_mm_apache0.sem") = -1 ENOTDIR (Not a directory) open("/dev/null/session_mm_apache0.sem", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0600) = -1 ENOTDIR (Not a directory) unlink("/dev/null/session_mm_apache0.sem") = -1 ENOTDIR (Not a directory) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-03-05 02:24:42] mfischer@php.net An other alternative would be to use use 'strace' on the apache process (make sure you start apache with -X switch), maybe you can gather where it has failed, e.g. strace -e trace=file -o output /usr/sbin/apache -X and see in file 'output' what fails. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2002-03-05 02:17:02] derick@php.net Can you try a snapshot from snaps.php.net? It might be fixed, if not we need feedback on that branch anyways. regards, Derick ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at http://bugs.php.net/13595 -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=13595&edit=1