postgres session handling

I have need to get php to use postgres to store session information. I've changed the directive in php.ini and written a set of functions that should do the job and I've made the call to set the session handler. The following simple test case works: <? require_once ('database.php'); require_once ('sess_handler.php'); //session_start (); session_register ('asdf'); $asdf = 123; print $asdf; ?> the idea being that the line where $asdf is assigned is commented out in the second execution of it and the value is still there upon reloading. That works fine. But, when I try to use it with the code for which it was originally intended I get this error: *Fatal error*: Failed to initialize session module in */usr/local/apache/vhosts/600xl/httpdocs/fe_login.php* on line *44* Keep in mind that this is all code which worked perfectly with the bulit in session handler before. Any ideas? Thanks, James.