[Buildroot] PHP7.0-FPM Session

[Tony Fuller]

Hello All,

I am having a strange problem with php7.0-fpm and session management.
After several failed iterations of trying to install NextCloud server
on a busybox rootfs I finally narrowed down the problem to PHP session
management.

I've tried to eliminate my web server as the problem and so I generated
a small php snippet that checks php's session_status() return value and
I have the same behavior on Apache + php module (which doesn't directly
interface with /var/run/php-fpm.sock) and (Nginx which does communicate
using /var/run/php-fpm.sock). In both webservers, session_status()
*always* returns PHP_SESSION_NONE.

I can see sess_* files created in /tmp. I've changed the location to
/var/lib/php/session (emulating debian style configuration). I've
changed the php-fpm daemon to run as www-data (as well as Apache and
Nginx). I've even gone so far as to chmod -R 777 / (and fixing up
/root/.ssh and /etc/ssh folders). 

Pulling the Debian Stretch rootfs that docker uses and installing all
above requirements yields a fully working NextCloud server instance
(under chroot) so I'm at a total loss. I'm working on a raspberry pi
currently but the actual target is a PowerPC 32bit processor which
Debian dropped support which is what brought me to buildroot in the
first place.

Any thoughts are welcome and appreciated.

Here's the simple testing script:
# cat sessiontest.php 
<?php
echo(session_status());
if (session_status() == PHP_SESSION_NONE) {
    echo("session_status is NONE");
    #$previous_name = session_name("WebsiteID");
    #echo "The previous session name was $previous_name<br />";
    session_start();
    echo("Now session_status is" . session_status());
}
else
{
    echo("There is some type of session");
    setcookie(session_name(),session_id(),time()+$lifetime);
}

$_SESSION["secretword"] = "ABC123" ;
$_SESSION["theme"] = "purple" ; 

?>