By alanic on

Can you tell me what are the purposes of the following PHP configuration directives adviced for Drupal?
session.save_handler: user
session.cache_limiter: none

Using them means compiling and using my own PHP executable in my account, which means I won't be able to enjoy automatic upgrades to PHP done by my hosting company. What happens if I don't use these directives? Is it worth it?

Comments

erdemkose’s picture

erdemkose commented

session.save_handler: user
This directive tells PHP that we will take care of session functions. Drupal keeps session data in its own database.

session.cache_limiter: none
session.cache_limiter specifies cache control method to use for session pages (none/nocache/private/private_no_expire/public). Defaults to nocache.

I don't think that you will need to recompile PHP to use these directives. Why do you think that you need to recompile?

Sessions in PHP

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http://erdemkose.com/

alanic’s picture

alanic commented

My question was more in the direction of *why* drupal needs these and what might go wrong with drupal if I don't have these.
My webhost runs PHP as CGI, not as an apache module and I like it that way. So AFAIK, I can't use .htaccess to change the PHP directives. It appears as I will need to have my own PHP executable that reads my config files. I did that before in this hosting company(dreamhost), so I don't need any advices about it. If you know a way to override PHP directives in dreamhost with PHP as CGI, then that may be of some use. I don't want to put ini_set() everywhere.

The reason I asked is that here someone gave a tutorial on how to install it on dreamhost:
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Drupal
And mentioned nothing about changing the PHP directives in question, which i think means people are running Drupal without them.

alanic’s picture

alanic commented

apparently .htaccess is not necessary. sites/default/settings.php sets them. so no worries.