session_set_save_handler

We have several small applications that have been using the built-in session functions from php for quite sometime. Recently, I have started using the session_set_save_handler in 3 of those applications. Even though the documentation on php.net says, "Note: You must set the configuration option session.save_handler to user in your php.ini file for session_set_save_handler() to take effect.", I have found that I can still use my customer save_handler with the session.save_handler in the php.ini being set to 'files'. Since I implemented this function, we noticed that our other applications that do not call session_set_save_handler started having the following error: "Fatal error: Failed to initialize session module in backend.php on line 27 Warning: Failed to write session data (user). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in backend.php on line 0" line 27 of backend.php is a simple session_start(); The /tmp is not full and is fully writable. It seems that when the 3 custom session applications are in use, that this error starts popping up in other session applications. Is my call to a session_set_save_handler somehow "changing" the php.ini for a bit? It's like the custom session application is setting the session.save_handler to 'user' for all other sessions. Any comments would be welcome. Thanks, Wendy wendy@ark.org