Containerized PHP application sessions directory is empty

[xusword]

Hi PHP users

 

We are migrating a PHP website from an old host to a container. The old code runs on VM directly, now we built a container that facilitate the PHP website. Both old and new PHP website run on top of apache httpd with php version 5.4.16.

 

However, there's a feature of this website that saves user session under `/var/lib/php/session` that does not work in our new, containerized version. The directory seems to always be empty even if there are active sessions. We have checked the following:

 

* The `session` configuration seems identical between the old and new site (pasting the config below)

* We verified `apache` user is the owner of `/var/lib/php/session` directory

* In php error logs, there doesn't seem to be anything indicating why the sessions are not saved

 

I am not familiar with PHP and don't know how I could debug this further, just checking if I can get some help on this.

 

* Any chance we forgot to install any module that would allow session persistent?

* Why would there not be any logs indicating the sessions not being saved? Do I need to somehow enable more logging to observe what is happening?

* Was the session not saved or did it timeout and get wiped? Is there such setting somewhere that can cause this?

 

Our configuration

 

Session Support: enabled

Registered save handlers: files user

Registered serializer handlers: php php_binary

 

session.auto_start: Off

session.cache_expire: 180

session.cache_limiter: nocache

session.cookie_domainno value

session.cookie_httponly: Off

session.cookie_lifetime: 0

session.cookie_path: /

session.cookie_secure: Off

session.entropy_file: /dev/urandom

session.entropy_length: 32

session.gc_divisor: 1000

session.gc_maxlifetime: 1440

session.gc_probability: 1

session.hash_bits_per_character: 5

session.hash_function: 0

session.name: PHPSESSID

session.referer_check: no value

session.save_handler: files

session.save_path: /var/lib/php/session

session.serialize_handler: php

session.upload_progress.cleanup: On

session.upload_progress.enabled: On

session.upload_progress.freq: 1%

session.upload_progress.min_freq: 1

session.upload_progress.name: PHP_SESSION_UPLOAD_PROGRESS

session.upload_progress.prefix: upload_progress_

session.use_cookies: On

session.use_only_cookies: On

session.use_trans_sid: 0

 

[ginerjm]

I have to ask.  What is a "container"?   And does 'VM' refer to something I haven't heard of in years when I was working with mainframes?  And have you heard that PHP Version 5.x is out of date and could be part of your supposed problem?

I may be stupid in asking this but why don't you just let the session be created where your installation wants to put it and not try and 'manage' it?  You start it, you save stuff and when your client session is done, PHP will delete it for you.

Edited March 20, 2023 by ginerjm

[requinix]

9 minutes ago, xusword said:

The directory seems to always be empty even if there are active sessions.

Does that mean sessions are working and persistent? And you just can't figure out where the data is being stored?

[xusword]

Thanks @ginerjm, the legacy system run on VM. Virtual machine. The new system run on Docker container.

@requinix, I am only guessing but I think PHP created the sub directory `/var/lib/php/session`, because I did not explicitly create that directory and I also know my container won't start properly if apache does not have access to that directory. Httpd will fail with error message complaining lack of access to that directory.

What I don't understand is why after it starts it doesn't write anything to that directory.

 

[xusword]

Thanks for anyone who replied. Very much appreciated.

Turns out our script messed around the permission of `/var/lib/php/session` after having the container run as root it straighten things out