FAQ: Can not login to /administrator (Joomla! backend) (when using WAMP)

[MarkV]

*** searchwords ***
Wamp, Windows, Apache, MySQL, Php, administrator, backend, login, problem

*** problem ***
Lot of people have problems loggin in to the Joomla! administrator. I had no problems on my apple or my linux install, but when using windows i came accross the login problem.
So what is the problem? Well in my case it was a session error. I installed php in a non default windows directory.
php.ini stated that my session should be saved in:
c:\PHP\sessiondata
but that directory does not exist.

*** solution ***
I changed the session savepath to:
session.save_path= C:\apache\PHP\sessiondata

*** is it the session error? ***

You can test whether or not you have a session error by editing administrator/index.php.
Add the lines:
session_start();
echo $_SESSION['session_id']

if the session can not be set you'll get a error that looks like this:
Warning: Unknown(): open(C:\PHP\sessiondata\sess_2dc0c0ca81f559eaf3eeb014cb05bb72, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in Unknown on line 0

Make sure the error reporting level in php.ini is at least 'Warning':
error_reporting  = E_WARNING;

*** links ***
Other reported problems can be found here: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,6490.0.html. If we only post solutions to the problem here we can keep the FAQ 'clean'.

[mdl_kid]

Hey all,

I just wanted to add some notes to this problem because i spent a few hours going through it also.

MarkY you had the problem right on the head and your quick test is useful it lead me to the problem. The thing that threw me off was that when i first installed the script i was able to login to the admin panel without a problem. Then after i had everything set up and made the site live i couldn't anymore.

With my host the session.save_path is within the users directory in a folder so I had to specify a session_write_path(); in the configuration file because I was unable to use the .htaccess method to change the php.ini variable locally. This was fine the problem was when i moved my old site to a _oldSite directory for backup i moved the folder that the session.save_path was pointing too, lol. I can't beleave how much time i spent on such a simple dumb mistake.

I thought i would post this incase anyone else does the same thing. Hope to save somebody some time.

[gregko]

mdl_kid hi,
where is the configuration file that defines the session_write_path();
Is this the configuration file that configures php instalation of the host? Can we, as clients, change this file?
Thanks

[mdl_kid]

Hey Gregko,

the session_save_path() is not built into the joomla code. If you need to specify a specific session_save_path() and cannot do it via the .htaccess file then you need to add the function to an install file and your configuration.php that holds all of your static variables e.g. database host, password, username, ect... I forget which file it was in the installation directory that i added the path to, but it is really easy to figure out. Just open up the pages and find a file that is included in them all. Then just add the line the that file. It probably holds a bunch of other configuration stuff in it.

Don't for get to add the path to your session directory in the session_save_path(yourDirectory);

Hope this helps,
Martin Dale Lyness

[guilliam]

@MarkV,

thanks for adding in the FAQ.. added search words for the forum: administrator loop, login loop,


- g