First off, sorry if this isn't the right place for this question but I'm kind of... well... very new to this "shell" thing. I'm familiar with html, php, the usual stuff, but I'm not sure what to do with the following issue...

I have a website that's been migrated to a new private virtual server. This site has both an admin and a members' area that you must login to view. When the user logs in a session is created that lasts for approx. 2 hours... I used a php.ini file to ensure a lengthy session. Now on the new server though with or without the php.ini file sessions don't seem to be being stored... at all... can't login with proper/improper/or any other type of creditential.

Anyway, long story short... I contacted our personal tech support at our hosting company and he told me that the only way to adjust the sessions was through the shell scripting and that I'd have to do that myself... So I'm kind of at a loss here as I have no idea... is there a simple way to extend session times from nothing to at least a couple of hours?

And again sorry if I'm out to lunch on this, as I don't really know any of this myself I'm just going on what my "tech support" has informed me of.

Thanks in advance.

I don't think it has anything to do with "shell scripting", as the shell is not involved in communication between your web server and the users' browsers. You will probably get more meaningful answers on a PHP forum. Also, I would try to find some other "personal tech support" at your provider, as the one you quoted didn't seem to have much understanding of the issue.

You may want to take a look here: PHP: Runtime Configuration - Manual

I would make sure that session.save_path points to a writeable directory, for example.