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Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 14:48:22 -0700
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Subject: Binary data in session
From: johnjawed@gmail.com (john)

I have been developing a site which stores an image files binary data 
inside a session variable. Initially, I was developing this site on the 
following environment:

Apache-2.0.52/PHP5.0.3/Windows XP

Things worked very well, as I expected them to anyway. I would upload 
images and they would be manipulated and stored back into the session.

I then moved over to my production box:

Apache-2.0.54/PHP5.0.4/FreeBSD

And everything literally stopped dead in it's track with regards to the 
session variables and the binary data. Whenever I now upload an image, 
it is properly stored in session. However, whenever I do 
session_start(); on any page, it just hangs.

In fact, here is the test.php file on which it hung:

<?PHP
session_start();
?>
Hi // Never gets outputted to browser

I've yet to come across other users with this same problem. Furthermore, 
upon suggestions of co-workers, I have tried to base64 encode before it 
is serialized by PHP and base64 decode this data when I need to use it.

Looking through my /var/tmp directory, I see that in fact the session 
file is 300KB, which makes sense, since the image I was trying to upload 
was indeed roughly 300KB.

Regards

PS, also check out my MySQLi group @ 
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/MySQLi if ever in need of help with 
that part of the PHP world :-)