[Isis-users] ABCD in Linux : problem with immediately expiring session

[De Smet Egbert]

For those interested in this specific issue : I found the problem and solution. The wonership of the directory, set as 'session.save_path' in PHP (php.ini defaults to that if not filled in) was set as root and I had to change it to www-data (the user under which Apache and ABCD run). Another option of course is to put /var/lib/php5 at rights '777' which also allows www-data to write in it, but this is less secure.
I have no idea how it got changed before but maybe some system update has introduced this change and caused the problem.

Egbert de Smet
Universiteit Antwerpen
________________________________________
From: De Smet Egbert
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2014 1:37 PM
To: isis-users at iccisis.org
Subject: ABCD in Linux : problem with immediately expering session

Hi,

has anybody using ABCD in Linux experienced this problem of the immediately expiring sessions, meaning that after logging in into ABCD clicking on any button immediately goes to the page with the error message "Session expired or you are not logged in"  ?
The user login data then have got lost, so the session indeed was closed immediately.

This problem is independent of ABCD itself, i.e. changing to a completely different installation of ABCD on the same server doesn't remove the problem, so it must be related to the Linux system and/or its PHP/Apache configuration.
I tried moving the PHP session_save_path to a different directory by putting the line
session_save_path ('/tmp' )
but again no positive result.
Googling the problem shows that others have experienced the same problem in totally different softwares and most instructions relate to either the session-save path or the browser-based settings for cookies but using different browsers with different cookie-settings again does not help.
I vaguely remember having seen others mentioning this problem in our ISIS-discussion list.

Egbert de Smet
Universiteit Antwerpen