php-fpm and nginx session problems - session

Question

I've been having this problem for the past week or so. I've been working on a PHP project that relies HEAVILY on Sessions. For some reason we've been having troubles with the sessions saving the past few days. Any idea why?
Here's the error:
Warning: Unknown: open(/tmp/sess_mmd0ru5pl2h2h9bummcu1uu620, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13) in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0
Warning: session_start(): open(/tmp/sess_mmd0ru5pl2h2h9bummcu1uu620, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13)
nginx version:
nginx version: nginx/1.0.11
PHP-FPM config:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; FPM Configuration ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; All relative paths in this configuration file are relative to PHP's install
; prefix.
; Include one or more files. If glob(3) exists, it is used to include a bunch of
; files from a glob(3) pattern. This directive can be used everywhere in the
; file.
include=/etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Global Options ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
[global]
; Pid file
; Default Value: none
pid = /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.pid
; Error log file
; Default Value: /var/log/php-fpm.log
error_log = /var/log/php-fpm/error.log
; Log level
; Possible Values: alert, error, warning, notice, debug
; Default Value: notice
;log_level = notice
; If this number of child processes exit with SIGSEGV or SIGBUS within the time
; interval set by emergency_restart_interval then FPM will restart. A value
; of '0' means 'Off'.
; Default Value: 0
;emergency_restart_threshold = 0
; Interval of time used by emergency_restart_interval to determine when
; a graceful restart will be initiated. This can be useful to work around
; accidental corruptions in an accelerator's shared memory.
; Available Units: s(econds), m(inutes), h(ours), or d(ays)
; Default Unit: seconds
; Default Value: 0
;emergency_restart_interval = 0
; Time limit for child processes to wait for a reaction on signals from master.
; Available units: s(econds), m(inutes), h(ours), or d(ays)
; Default Unit: seconds
; Default Value: 0
;process_control_timeout = 0
; Send FPM to background. Set to 'no' to keep FPM in foreground for debugging.
; Default Value: yes
;daemonize = yes
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Pool Definitions ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; See /etc/php-fpm.d/*.conf
nginx.conf:
#######################################################################
#
# This is the main Nginx configuration file.
#
# More information about the configuration options is available on
# * the English wiki - http://wiki.nginx.org/Main
# * the Russian documentation - http://sysoev.ru/nginx/
#
#######################################################################
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Main Module - directives that cover basic functionality
#
# http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpMainModule
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
user nginx nginx;
worker_processes 5;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
#error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log notice;
#error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log info;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Events Module
#
# http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpEventsModule
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
events {
worker_connections 4096;
}
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
# HTTP Core Module
#
# http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpCoreModule
#
#----------------------------------------------------------------------
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;
#keepalive_timeout 0;
keepalive_timeout 65;
#gzip on;
# Load config files from the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory
# The default server is in conf.d/default.conf
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
server {
listen 80;
server_name stats.smilingdevil.com;
error_page 404 /404.php;
root /var/www;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
location / {
set $page_to_view "/index.php";
try_files $uri $uri/ #rewrites;
root /var/www/;
index index.php;
}
location #rewrites {
if ($uri ~* ^/([a-z0-9]+)$) {
set $page_to_view "/$1.php";
rewrite ^/([a-z]+)$ /$1.php last;
}
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
}

Answer 1

Just change the ownership of /var/lib/php/session/ to nginx from apache instead of giving a world read.
sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/lib/php/session/

Answer 2

I found that my php.ini was attempting to save sessions to /var/lib/php/session rather than /tmp
So check your ini file and see where they're being saved to (or set it to somewhere else); then make sure that directory is writeable by the appropriate processes

Answer 3

TL;DR: Add nginx user to apache group
RHEL has decided that /var/lib/php/session is owned by the php package. That package has decided that it will always recreate the /var/lib/php/session directory when installed and will always return the directory to being owned by root with group set to apache with full permissions for each and no permissions for anything else. Therefore, while many suggested solutions here suggest changing the permissions of /var/lib/php/session, that will cause problems in the future.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1146552
The RHEL suggested way of fixing this issue is to create your own session directory wherever you'd like to store it and set the permissions as necessary. Future php updates won't affect that new location and everything should stay working.
An alternative that has worked quite well for me is to simply add nginx to the apache group.

Answer 4

Chris Rutledge is right,
php some times is saving sesions on /var/lib/php/session/ directory
check your php.ini file or
create the directory with 777 rights
mkdir /var/lib/php/session
chmod -R 777 /var/lib/php/session

Answer 5

this error occured due to the user which run php process may not have permission to write on /tmp directory
to make it writeable by all user use this commend
chmod 777 /tmp
another reason which causes the same issue is read only file system
if /dev/sda1 is mounted on /tmp and due to heavy write your file system may become read only...
to make it rewritable again use this command
mount -t ext3 -o rw,remount /dev/sda1 /tmp

Answer 6

Seems I found something interesting on the Linux. In the chroot php-cgi make same errors when some PHP software try to read/write session. I thought this could be permission issue, but after set 777 and set owner of the webserver to the "/tmp" and set it in the After many hours it found that "urandom" device in the "/dev" needed to work it. Just make sure that it found or copy/make it and change permissions temporary (just for check and then change to safely):
chmod 777 /dev/urandom
Strange to me that it wasn't required in some PHP5.x version but in some PHP7.x need to be there.

Answer 7

I just went through an upgrade of PHP on CentOS. I had to change /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and update the php_value[session.save_path] variable and set it to /tmp
php_value[session.save_path] = /tmp
This works fine.
I don't think this will be a security hazard.

Answer 8

You might get this error when you'r using NGINX and the server gives permission to apache instead of nginx.
My fix is:
chown -R nginx:nginx /var/lib/php/
With chown you are changhing the owner of that specific folder and -R means its recursive.