session_start(): Session data file is not created by your uid

Question

I want to store the created sessions in a directory above the root, except when I use any of the following:

    session_save_path($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/../storage/sessions');
    session_save_path($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/../storage/sessions/'); // With an extra slash at the end
ini_set('session.save_path', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/../storage/sessions');
ini_set('session.save_path', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/../storage/sessions/'); // Again with the extra slash

and not one of these methods work, whenever I load the page I get the following errors:

Warning: session_start(): Session data file is not created by your uid in /var/www/bootstrap/bootstrap.php on line 25

Warning: session_start(): Failed to read session data: files (path: /var/www/public/../storage/sessions/) in /var/www/bootstrap/bootstrap.php on line 25

Can anyone help me?

Edit: My server runs on PHP 7.1

It's a linux user permissions error; make sure your able to read/write to those locations(folders should be 0755 and your files should be 0644), and that your user has permission to read to those locations. — Kaylined, Jan 20 '17 at 20:04
how can I find out which user wants to access those locations? and changing permissions is chown right? — Oreborous, Jan 20 '17 at 20:06
I have tried all of the above solutions, change the folders folder, create another folder for the session, manage a session by redis, and nothing worked, which solved my problem leaving session.auto_start = 1 which means enabled, in php.ini — Jerfeson Guerreiro, Feb 03 '19 at 14:34

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '17 at 07:36

12

PHP requires session file to be owned by the user running PHP.

Then just run chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/storage/sessions/ to own session folder and files by your PHP user (www-data:www-data are your PHP user and group separated by :).

You can use PHP method get_current_user() or run in bash php -i | grep user and find your user running PHP there.

answered Feb 06 '17 at 07:36

zored

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in my case `/var/www/storage/sessions/` directory doesn't exist neither `/usr/local/var/www/storage/sessions/` directory exists. and yes i am in mac. also after creating the mentioned directory and trying to change ownership or the directory it shows `chown: www-data: illegal group name` – vaibhav3027 Dec 24 '21 at 10:50
Also it used to work before i restarted my mac and now it stopped working – vaibhav3027 Dec 24 '21 at 10:56

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered May 11 '18 at 15:25

4

Editing config/config.yml and replacing save_path:

session:
    save_path: '/tmp'

answered May 11 '18 at 15:25

Ashfaq Muhammad

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score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 19 '18 at 17:32

4

this works for me:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/php/sessions

answered Jul 19 '18 at 17:32

elMatador

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2

Thanks for your effort, but please read the question carefully: OP wants to use a custom session save_path. Your answer might work with the default settings but is unrelated to this question. – Johannes Trümpelmann Jul 19 '18 at 17:49

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 27 '18 at 09:18

On Ubuntu within Windows 10 , my php user is the default user I create for the first install, I dont know why because the etc/apache2/envvars is not configured like that.

Nevermind, I change it for fix it quickly and now, it works.

export APACHE_RUN_USER=rudak
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=rudak

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 06 '18 at 09:43

2

What worked for me, could work for you as well.

It looks like something went wrong with the session. Open the browser's DevTools and delete all Sessioncookies.

answered Dec 06 '18 at 09:43

Florin

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered May 11 '17 at 12:28

1

I could be that your Session file was created by another user (well UID), try (re)moving the session file(s) from your temp dir something like /var/tmp

answered May 11 '17 at 12:28

Recycled Steel

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 20 '17 at 17:40

1

I use this to also make Named Pipes in php.

<?php
$user = get_current_user();   // get current process user

// We need to modify the permissions so users can write to it

exec( "chown -R {$user}:{$user} $fifoPath" );

answered Nov 20 '17 at 17:40

Richard Tyler Miles

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 04 '18 at 13:54

0

Another solution: rename your session folder var/session to var/session_old

create a new folder var/session

and delete the old one.

answered Apr 04 '18 at 13:54

Martijn van Hoof

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 05 '20 at 17:53

For lampp users,
- go to /opt/lampp/temp/
- delete session file, and test again

After testing again,
If error message "Wrong permissions on configuration file, should not be world writable!" shows,
Run the following at terminal:
sudo chmod 755 /opt/lampp/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php

That worked for me ...

score -1 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 27 '22 at 14:04

-1

The solution for me was just to wipe the contents of the sessions folder. Not sure how or why that helped, but it did.

answered Sep 27 '22 at 14:04

Imran Isak

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session_start(): Session data file is not created by your uid

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