Thread

I’m using the ‘Health Check’ plugin and in the last couple of sites I’ve installed on TPP Wholesale I’ve gotten the following error:

session_save_path is not writable

TPP’s tech support have fixed this by adding the following to the top of the admin.php files

ini_set("session.save_handler", "files");
 
session_save_path ("/full-server-path/public_html/tmp");

I’ve taken the full server path out here for obvious reasons.

The error message is now gone but I just want to check if this is ok and unlikely to cause any problems - apart from me having to remember to update new admin.php files in future.

Can anyone tell what this is actually needed for?

Hi Damien Buckley,

I can empathize with your frustration, but Health Check is a third-party add-on. We can’t provide support for third-party add-ons at all.

You’ll need to contact the add-ons author with your question.

Cheers,

Er, I wasnt actually asking for support for Health Check. I was asking what the purpose of session save_path is and if it is critical to EE’s operation? ie

I just want to check if this is ok and unlikely to cause any problems - apart from me having to remember to update new admin.php files in future.

Can anyone tell what this is actually needed for?

I answered this on Twitter but i’m going to answer at slightly more length here, both for posterity and because frankly i think that Dan Decker’s answer was pretty uncalled for and shortsighted. Damien wasn’t asking about Health Check, he was asking about an underlying environment problem that Health Check had turned up, and whether that underlying problem is going to have any effect on an EE installation.

The answer is that session_save_path is a PHP variable that is set in php.ini, and on many shared hosting setups it’s actually set to a location that’s not writable. It usually doesn’t actually matter; EE is capable of doing session management without it unless something goes really wrong. Some addons, however, may NOT work properly without it.

Damien: the issue with the solution your host implemented is that anytime you upgrade EE you’ll have to remember to make those mods to the admin.php file. That MAY be the best solution you can manage. However, assuming that Apache is configured to allow setting PHP overrides in .htaccess (which it may or may not be, on a shared host, but it’s a better than even chance that it will be), you should just be able to add the following two lines to the .htaccess file in your webroot:

php_value session.save_handler files
php_value session.save_path "/path/to/tmp"

The way to tell whether or not you’re allowed to set these values is: set them, and then try to load your site. If you get a “500 Server Misconfiguration Error”, you can’t override these values in .htaccess, and you’re stuck with the admin.php edit. If everything loads fine, you can just delete the lines your host added to admin.php and go about your day!

Thanks Adrienne, that makes sense.

I’ve been able to use .htaccess to set such before so I’ll give it a go and see what happens. As you say it would be much better to not have to remember to update admin.php each time as that is likely to go out the window 6 months after I’ve launched the site and am doing an upgrade, then fuuuuuuu…

Following the support thread at Health Check, Brandon Kelly had asked for that check to be included so it obviously relates to extensions in some way.

Thanks again.

Adrienne,

I will respectfully disagree with you regarding my answer.

It was a third-party add on that turned up the deficiency, not a stock ExpressionEngine installation file. The host’s suggestion was to make a change to an important part of EE, the admin.php file, to sidestep this error - hence, unsupported.

However, I do appreciate that you have fleshed out the answer a bit - and based on Damien’s reply, not the only one to encounter this error as the result of a third-party add-on.

Moving this into Community Help.

Cheers!

All - Damien

Upon reflection, I am really sorry about the way this went.

I failed to understand the root of the question, and that’s unacceptable. I read back over this and I do come over as terse and uncaring - that is certainly not the case.

Sometimes I get the cart before the horse and I need to slow down and take care of you all.

I promise I’ll be more mindful in the future!

Thanks for your patience and understanding, I do appreciate it.

Cheers!