PHP sessions that cause Apache to hang indefinitely

Question

The problem is that every time the page that writes to the session will make apache freeze forever for a particular session. As soon as this error occurs for one user, any further changes to any session of any user will cause the website to freeze for that user.

This problem was my only goal for several days. I have a version of VPS running Windows 2003 and the latest version of XAMPP by default using the standard PHP session handler. This code actually works on the other two machines completely fine, therefore, although my common sense speaks about the problem with setting up the web server, but at the moment I'm ready to try something.

There are no errors in the further investigation of errors in the Apache, PHP, or System event log. Resources abound and there is no “AJAX shit storm” or more than a couple writes per session on a page. I also used session_write_close (), where possible, to try to help solve the problem.

I checked the session directory that is set to "C: \ windows \ Temp" and found that as soon as the user enters this phase of waiting that the corresponding session file is locked, and the only way to resolve this is to stop Apache and wait a few seconds to Files were unlocked and deleted. I am not wondering if deletion is required.

The sessions themselves contain only 4 bits of information. ShoppingCartID, UserID, UserLevel and the reference URL are both alphanumeric with a random slash.

The section of my PHP.INIs is configured as follows:

session.save_handler = files session.save_path = "C:\WINDOWS\Temp" session.use_cookies = 1 session.name = PHPSESSID session.auto_start = 0 session.cookie_lifetime = 0 session.cookie_path = / session.cookie_domain = session.cookie_httponly = session.serialize_handler = php session.gc_probability = 1 session.gc_divisor = 100 session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 session.bug_compat_42 = 1 session.bug_compat_warn = 1 session.referer_check = session.entropy_length = 0 session.entropy_file = session.cache_limiter = nocache session.cache_expire = 180 session.use_trans_sid = 0 session.hash_function = 0 session.hash_bits_per_character = 4 

I tried everything I could think of, and the whole problem is now blurred for me. Any ideas would be appreciated and appreciated for your time reading this :)

Answer 1

Your session files may be locked by Windows, or some php.ini settings may not be executed properly. Please SEE HERE

I almost want to say my lock files.

Answer 2

Is it possible that your application internally requests a page from the same site again inside? You may encounter a race condition when page A starts up, blocks the session, and then somehow starts the request to itself or page B, which also tries to restart the session, which is now blocked, and the request hangs.

Otherwise, if the hang is caused by a locked session file, I would suggest using something like SYSInternal ' Handle ' to get a list of processes that use the session file.