Admin Sessions broken, public side fine

[monkeytown]

Recently, I had our host do some updates to ours server (servint, VPS). Our site had been running slow and so they upgraded several components and resources.

The result was that I can no longer login to the admin area of the site (I didn't discover this for a couple of days). The public side is working fine.

I have run through all the tutorials and other boards I can find with similar problems. It seems to be a server issue but I am looking for why the admin side sessions wouldn't work where the public side does.

When I try to login I get a security error. The session token and post token do not match. What is happening is when the page reloads, the session token is being refreshed and so it doesn't match the posted security token, it does match the previous token however. I am looking for insight to how the admin side is different so I can go to the host with better information, or perhaps there is a fix on the software side (unlikely).

[monkeytown]

PHP: 5.2.13
not sure of anything else version wise, but I suspect the PHP is the problem, possibly php.ini?

[monkeytown]

Seems the seesions are not saving properly on the server even though the settings seem to be correct in the php.ini. Apparently, only the admin side of the site is Session dependent.

Any ideas?

[monkeytown]

So, sessions on the server have been restored. The zen site still isn't storing them properly however. Within the Zen framework, sessions don't seem to be working. Outside of Zen, the sessions are saving. I assume something with the upgrade to PHP 5.2.13 has broken something but the server does seem to be configured correctly. Unfortunately with the bug or issue (whatever the cause) I can not login to the admin which is beginning to cause problems... any ideas?

[CJPinder]

It may be having problems recreating the session when you log into the admin. Try the following in phpMyAdmin...

UPDATE configuration SET `configuration_value` = 'False' WHERE `configuration_key`='SESSION_RECREATE';

(add any necessary table prefix)

Regards,
Christian.

[Website Rob]

Downgrading PHP to v5.2.12 should resolve the problem, if Christian's method doesn't work.

[iRAY]

There is a patch by DrByte for PHP 5.3: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpo...84&postcount=2

[monkeytown]

hmm... for some reason, I wasn't receiving notifications of these posts... thanks for the help. Seems the issue was a bad entry in the SESSION_WRITE_DIRECTORY config key in the DB. I changed it to a valid folder and it now works.

Thanks again for the help guys.