generating new session-id on every page

i fear that i have misunderstood something basic, but due to the limitations in the docs for sessions in php4, i'll plead ignorgance and post my problem :) i have lots of problems with getting php4 to handle sessions correctly. it seems that it generates a new SID every time. my testpage is count.php and looks like this: <?php session_register("count"); $count++; print '<html>'; print '<p>the counter is: '.$count.'</p>'; print '<p><a href="count.php">increment</a></p>'; print '</html>'; ?> now if i reload the page with the reload-button in Netscape, it acts like i want it to, incrementing the counter. but if i press the link and thus loads the document as a new one, it sets a new session cookie. is there something i am missing out on here? i am running FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE with Apache and php4b4pl1. i compiled Apache as the "quick install" directions in the php4 INSTALL-file suggested. - no fancy stuff in the configure. only --with-mysql and --enable-track-vars. the session section of my php.ini looks like this: [Session] session.save_handler = files ; handler used to store/retrieve data session.save_path = /tmp ; argument passed to save_handler ; in the case of files, this is the ; path where data files are stored session.use_cookies = 1 ; whether to use cookies session.name = PHPSESSID ; name of the session ; is used as cookie name session.auto_start = 0 ; initialize session on request startup session.cookie_lifetime = 0 ; lifetime in seconds of cookie ; or if 0, until browser is restarted session.cookie_path = / ; the path the cookie is valid for session.cookie_domain = ; the domain the cookie is valid for session.serialize_handler = php ; handler used to serialize data ; php is the standard serializer of PHP session.gc_probability = 1 ; procentual probability that the ; 'garbage collection' process is started ; on every session initialization session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 ; after this number of seconds, stored ; data will be seen as 'garbage' and ; cleaned up by the gc process session.referer_check = 1 ; check HTTP Referer to invalidate ; externally stored URLs containing ids session.entropy_length = 0 ; how many bytes to read from the file session.entropy_file = ; specified here to create the session id ; session.entropy_length = 16 ; session.entropy_file = /dev/urandom session.cache_limiter = nocache ; set to {nocache,private,public} to ; determine HTTP caching aspects session.cache_expire = 180 ; document expires after n minutes hope someone can enlighten me. Terje -- Terje With Lunndal KPNQwest Norway