Cannot start session without errors in phpMyAdmin

Question

I get the below error when pointing browser to phpMyAdmin

Cannot start session without errors, please check errors given in your PHP and/or webserver log file and configure your PHP installation properly.

I have checked everything and can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

In my php.ini file I have:

session.save_path = "/var/lib/php/session" 

Permissions:

drwxr-xr-x  2 root apache 4096 Feb 16 04:47 session 

Nothing seems to work. Even changing permission on session directory to 777.

Answer 1

Problem usually lies on your browser end.

You need to flush your browser cache, delete the cookies for the server/host and then retry loading phpMyAdmin.

If you want to go all out, clear out the session folder on the server as well.

One possible reason for this is a session data mismatch between the browser and the webserver causing it to not be able to pull out the required session info and dumping this error dialogue on your lap.

Answer 2

The problem can be due to file and folder permissions; You can try changing the folder permissions:

sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/php/session/ 

This will set full read/write permissions on the PHP sessions folder.

Note: the php/session/ folder may be in a different location on some servers. Check your php.ini for your session path.