Ok, so I tried to install Joomla but there is no save session information. To confirm I used a phpinfo script to discover that this isn't set in my server's configuration. So, after searching these forums for how to create a custom php.ini, I found a nifty little tutorial and script to do this. However when I run such a script, I can never access the php.ini file. In another thread from about a year ago the administrator offered to CHMOD the php.ini file so that it could be temporarily copied to the main public_html directory for use. Is there anyway someone could do this for me? If not, I downloaded php 5.2.0, and began the tedious process of manually changing all of the values to match the phpinfo from my server when I realized that even if that did work I would have to do it again if Trap17 upgrades to 5.2.5 or simply changes one of the values in the master php.ini. Thank you for everything, and advice would be extremely helpful. Thank you.

Certain things can be modified using the ini_set function in php.

Check out the function description etc at http://php.net, in particular, there is an Appendix to the php Manual which tells you which directives can be modded via scripting.
Good Luck.

There is, however, no way I can use a script to read the php.ini file and edit it on the fly to create my own php.ini? Doing it manually is extremely inefficient . I just wish there was a way I could edit all of my settings separate from individual scripts. Is it at all possible that the session.save_path option could be set to tmp in our root public_html directories? Is there a security disadvantage for not doing so? Thanks for the response, I love Trap17 and I'm sure I will find ways around these problems.

This post has been edited by Revan: Jan 16 2008, 05:13 AM

I don't think you can re-write the php.ini file since you do not have full access to the Server files.
Also, as you call php to perform this re-write, the directives are already configured.

Look at adding the ini_set() into your Configuration files for the scripts? to alter what changes you need.

I agree with haslip that you can't rewrite the php.ini, however, why would you need to download php 5.2 when its already installed in your hosting account. However, I do believe your problem is common so I googled a search for you to sift through the results to get an answer about installing joomla on a save session path. Of course I do believe the pre-install joomla 1.3 comes with it but not to sure about that though.

I downloaded php 5.2.0 because that is the version installed on my webhost. You see, PHP allows you to load your own custom php.ini file, so I wanted to to configure my own. My dilemma, as previously stated, is that I can't use any of the MANY scripts written for this purpose, Import the main php.ini and put in your values for the things you want to change on the fly; This is simply because the php.ini is fully hidden from users, I can understand why in some instances, but I'm not trying to change the values for everyone on xisto, that's silly. I only want to be able to use my own values for the php.ini, I understand php.ini is a file shared to everyone who is on my server, I was just wondering if any help could be given in properly utilizing a custom php.ini script. I think my solution is to simply use phpinfo to find all of the values for trap17's php.ini file and edit them into the php.ini file I downloaded with php 5.2.0, considering that unfortunately ini_set seems unresponsive. Thanks for all of your help, I have been on Joomla forms as well and I assure you bothering the good folks here with my problems was a last resort.

It is no bother at all. Experienced Members help newer members and they help still newer members. That is the beauty of the Forum system we have here. It is a collection of people with different strengths, all assisting one another to develop the skills needed to run a Web site and other stuff. We share what we know and others share the stuff we need to learn. A win-win situation.

What system are you downloading the php5.2 on? XAMPP, WAMP, easyphp? or the apache http server directly?

I downloaded PHP 5.2.0 on my home computer from their site just so that I could get a copy of php.ini to edit. I added my own values on top of putting in trap17 values to be as in sync as possible. The script I was trying to use in my first post does this automatically. The original topic I received this information from was from trap17 about two years ago found here.