PHP4 Sessions and mod_layout/auto_append_file

Greetings all, I've been strugglign for a while now with getting a site to work like this. I installed mod_layout, which allows you to define a LayoutHeader and LayoutFooter. This makes creating site looks very easy. I was also trying to use PHP4 sessions as well. I created a header.php which contains session_start() at the first line, then does the html layout I want. All goes well. In the index.php document that's being wrapped, i can register a session variable, and see that it's registered in the temp file. However, when I follow a link to another page that also is in the layout, things go awry The session variable is being carried over correctly, I can echo the $PHPSESSID and see that it's the same as was created on the index.php page. However, I cannot access any of the session variables. As a matter of fact, session_is_registered tells me it's not even registerd to that session. If I remove the header and footer, and just add the session_start() to the begginning of the index.php page and the linked page, everything works fine and I can access the variables that I register within the script. I've tried this with PHP's auto_append_file and auto_prepend_file too but get many session errors. Is this unable to be done, that is using sessions with page layouts? Anyone have any links or experiences to share? Thanks, -Brian