/var/lib/php/session/ Not a Valid Directory - Has anyone solved this?

[settergrey]

Operating system type and version: Red Hat Linux
Sugar Suite version: 4.2.0d
Webserver type and version: Apache 2.0.52
PHP version: PHP 4.39
MySQL server version: Mysql 4.1.12

Looking for pointers from anyone who has successfully gotten past this. Nothing I do gets rid of this one error that is preventing me from moving to the next step in the installation. Everything on step 2 of the installation comes back with OK except this:

/var/lib/php/session/ Not a Valid Directory

Now, the directory is there, it is writable and phpinfo shows it as the session directory. What's more, there is session info in there which means sessions are working properly.

I've spent hours going through the forums and have tried everything I've seen (changing it to /tmp, adding a slash at the end, removing the slash at the end, restart apache -- wash, rinse, repeat). We have root access to this server (Red Hat Linux, Apache 2.0.52, Mysql 4.1.12, PHP 4.39) and all the permissions are correct and so is the ownership. Could there be anything I am missing? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!!
J (settergrey)

My phpinfo session info is below in case it will raise any flags:

Session Support enabled
Registered save handlers files user

Directive Local Value Master Value
session.auto_start Off Off
session.bug_compat_42 Off Off
session.bug_compat_warn On On
session.cache_expire 180 180
session.cache_limiter nocache nocache
session.cookie_domain no value no value
session.cookie_lifetime 0 0
session.cookie_path / /
session.cookie_secure Off Off
session.entropy_file no value no value
session.entropy_length 0 0
session.gc_divisor 1000 1000
session.gc_maxlifetime 1440 1440
session.gc_probability 1 1
session.name PHPSESSID PHPSESSID
session.referer_check no value no value
session.save_handler files files
session.save_path /var/lib/php/session/ /var/lib/php/session/
session.serialize_handler php php
session.use_cookies On On
session.use_only_cookies Off Off
session.use_trans_sid Off Off

[exmadyn]

try this one, this is what i did when i encountered the same error..

i created a .htaccess file on my sugarcrm directory with this line inside: php_value session.save_path '/tmp'
i created a tmp folder under my sugarcrm directory with chmod 777

[edelapatte]

Do you run it on a virtual server with Plesk 8.x?

If so you must hack checkSystem.php. Just change before the point it's going to check if what's in $session_save_path.
Put this line just before checking it's a dir.

$session_save_path = '/var/www/vhosts/yourdomain/httpdocs/tmp';

Before the following line:
if(is_dir($session_save_path)) {

Hope this will help.