session_start(): ps_files_cleanup_dir

[nitinpatel1117]

HI, i'm getting this error on my PHP scripts, but the weird thing is that it only appears sometimes

the exact error is:
Notice: session_start() [function.session-start]: ps_files_cleanup_dir: opendir(C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\) failed: No such file or directory

it says it appears on line 28,
line 28 only contains a
[PHP]session_start()[/PHP]
and no other code is near this line.

the funny thing is that it only appears occasionly.
If I refresh the page, the error goes away and sometimes it comes back.

i've been doing some searcing on google for this, but all i could find was that there is an error in PHP that causes this to happen on Debain operating system.


my website is running on IIS 6.0 on windows server 2003 (i'm using PHP 5), and there doesn't seem to be any mention of this bug in a windows environment.

Anyone have any idea on how i can fix this?, or why it is happening?

[harshmaul]

session start has to be the absolute first line of php in the page. before any headers are sent,
line sone should be ... session_start();

[nitinpatel1117]

Hi Harshmaul
I am not sending any headers, or outputing anything onto the screen before the session_start(), so i'm pretty sure its not related to that.

also if it was related to that, then the error should always appear.
but my error only appears occasionaly.


I think it may have something to do with the 'garbage collector' removing my session file, or something along those lines. which would mean that i need to configure my php.ini

also, i've just installed php on this server, meaning that the chances that php.ini needs configuring are even greater, so i'm pretty sure its something to do with php.ini, but i've got no idea what needs to be set and to what.

any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[nitinpatel1117]

settings in my php.ini are as follows:

session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440
session.gc_probability = 1
session.gc_divisor = 100


session.gc_divisor was origionally set to 1000, but i changed it to 100 to see it this makes any difference, although this would probably increase the probability of the garbage collector being started.

the above max life is 1440 which is 24 minutes, which is definilty within the time frame of my script, so i think that is not the problem.


Anyone?

[Atli]

Hi.

Is this having any effect on how your code is executing?
Is you code behaving abnormally when this notice is shown?

If not you could simply block it.

@session_start();
 

This should silence the notice.
But if you choose to do this I would keep an eye out for weird session behavior.

[rohypnol]

From what I've seen in other places, the problem is with permissions... PHP might not have enough rights to work with that folder.

Regarding what harshmaul said, I'm pretty sure that the call session_start() is OK, as I've had this error before, too. The second error message ("headers already sent") shows up because you're trying to send headers after the output has already started. You may have not done it yourself, but the first error message popping up has done it for you.

Maybe this helps, read both pages before taking action:
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=805632
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=20720&edit=1

DON'T do like I did, which was to give PHP the same rights as root. That was the worst decision I've taken in the past 30 years. That will only make your whole system vulnerable to everyone out there...

Suppressing the error message with an @ should be fine for the moment but there are long-term side-effects, I am not aware of them, but I'm sure there are.

Hope this helps, it took me quite a while to realize what's happening and I was surprised that there wasn't a complete answer on bytes.com