EE using /tmp/phptmp for thumbnails even though upload_tmp_dir is different

Hi all,

I’m running into an issue with file thumbnails in ExpressionEngine.

Error:

The root path /tmp/phptmp is not readable

Context:

Hosting: shared hosting PHP temp dir originally pointed to /tmp/phptmp (not accessible)

I changed upload_tmp_dir to:

/home/lasasoprano/.tmp

Verified that PHP can write there:

$file = tempnam(‘/home/lasasoprano/.tmp’, ‘test_’);

→ works correctly

Also confirmed:

is_dir(…) = true is_writable(…) = true

However:

ExpressionEngine still tries to use /tmp/phptmp when generating thumbnails sys_get_temp_dir() still returns /tmp/phptmp Questions Does EE rely on sys_get_temp_dir() for image processing / thumbnails instead of upload_tmp_dir? Is there any way to override the temp directory used by EE internally?

Could this be related to caching?

Specifically:

Can /system/user/cache/ store a previously resolved temp path? Is it safe to clear this folder to force EE to refresh environment paths? Has anyone seen this mismatch before on shared hosting? What I suspect

It looks like:

PHP uploads → use /home/…/.tmp ✔️ EE thumbnails → use sys_get_temp_dir() → /tmp/phptmp ❌

Which causes the failure.

Any insights would be really appreciated.

Thanks!