Alright, I know this is a repeat topic to a much older thread, however, I have tried many, MANY, solutions that were posted, however none of them work, I will post as much detail as possible, as I've been working on this issue for two days now with not much luck.

Currently, I am halted by the Authentication Required message at login, which loops immediately when entering the username/password details.

I've managed to get so far as to the main admin page when I edit the login.php file within the /scp directory by commenting out the following line:

// <USERMENTION username="header">@header</USERMENTION>("Location: $dest");

However by commenting that I am then immediately kicked backed to "Authentication Required" when navigating to any other page.

I was then given additional code to enter, and remove the comment:

session_write_close(); //Close the session.

session_regenerate_id(); //Regenerating SID

<USERMENTION username="header">@header</USERMENTION>("Location: $dest");

require('index.php'); //Just incase.

exit;

However when doing that, the entire login page goes blank, and I am then unable to view even the login prompt.

I DO have access to the PHP.INI file on my webserver, however am hesitant to edit it as I have very limited working knowledge of PHP. I do know however that I had this same issue with SMF forum, when logging in it would immediately kick me back to the login, which was an issue with sessions as well, so I ended up ditching the board and moving to PHPBB, as I could not figure out the problem.

Below is the primary PHP.INI file on my webserver (session section only):

; Handler used to store/retrieve data.

session.save_handler = /home/users/web/b1856/moo.l2contentioncom/cgi-bin/tmp

; Argument passed to save_handler. In the case of files, this is the path

; where data files are stored. Note: Windows users have to change this

; variable in order to use PHP's session functions.

;; As of PHP 4.0.1, you can define the path as:
;session.save_path = /home/users/web/b1856/moo.l2contentioncom/cgi-bin/tmp
;; where N is an integer.  Instead of storing all the session files in
; /path, what this will do is use subdirectories N-levels deep, and
; store the session data in those directories.  This is useful if you
; or your OS have problems with lots of files in one directory, and is
; a more efficient layout for servers that handle lots of sessions.
;; NOTE 1: PHP will not create this directory structure automatically.
;         You can use the script in the ext/session dir for that purpose.
; NOTE 2: See the section on garbage collection below if you choose to
;         use subdirectories for session storage
;; The file storage module creates files using mode 600 by default.
; You can change that by using
;session.save_path = /home/users/web/b1856/moo.l2contentioncom/cgi-bin/tmp
;; where MODE is the octal representation of the mode. Note that this
; does not overwrite the process's umask.
session.save_path = /home/users/web/b1856/moo.l2contentioncom/cgi-bin/tmp
; Whether to use cookies.
session.use_cookies = 1
; This option enables administrators to make their users invulnerable to
; attacks which involve passing session ids in URLs; defaults to 0.
; session.use_only_cookies = 1
; Name of the session (used as cookie name).
session.name = PHPSESSID
; Initialize session on request startup.
session.auto_start = 0
; Lifetime in seconds of cookie or, if 0, until browser is restarted.
session.cookie_lifetime = 0
; The path for which the cookie is valid.
session.cookie_path = /
; The domain for which the cookie is valid.
session.cookie_domain =
; Handler used to serialize data.  php is the standard serializer of PHP.
session.serialize_handler = php
; Define the probability that the 'garbage collection' process is started
; on every session initialization.
; The probability is calculated by using gc_probability/gc_divisor,
; e.g. 1/100 means there is a 1% chance that the GC process starts
; on each request.
session.gc_probability = 1
session.gc_divisor     = 100
; After this number of seconds, stored data will be seen as 'garbage' and
; cleaned up by the garbage collection process.
session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440
; NOTE: If you are using the subdirectory option for storing session files
;       (see session.save_path above), then garbage collection does *not*
;       happen automatically.  You will need to do your own garbage
;       collection through a shell script, cron entry, or some other method.
;       For example, the following script would is the equivalent of
;       setting session.gc_maxlifetime to 1440 (1440 seconds = 24 minutes):
;          cd /path/to/sessions; find -cmin +24 | xargs rm
; PHP 4.2 and less have an undocumented feature/bug that allows you to
; to initialize a session variable in the global scope, albeit register_globals
; is disabled.  PHP 4.3 and later will warn you, if this feature is used.
; You can disable the feature and the warning separately. At this time,
; the warning is only displayed, if bug_compat_42 is enabled.
session.bug_compat_42 = 1
session.bug_compat_warn = 1
; Check HTTP Referer to invalidate externally stored URLs containing ids.
; HTTP_REFERER has to contain this substring for the session to be
; considered as valid.
session.referer_check =
; How many bytes to read from the file.
session.entropy_length = 0
; Specified here to create the session id.
session.entropy_file =
;session.entropy_length = 16
;session.entropy_file = /dev/urandom
; Set to {nocache,private,public,} to determine HTTP caching aspects
; or leave this empty to avoid sending anti-caching headers.
session.cache_limiter = nocache
; Document expires after n minutes.
session.cache_expire = 180
; trans sid support is disabled by default.
; Use of trans sid may risk your users security.
; Use this option with caution.
; - User may send URL contains active session ID
;   to other person via. email/irc/etc.
; - URL that contains active session ID may be stored
;   in publically accessible computer.
; - User may access your site with the same session ID
;   always using URL stored in browser's history or bookmarks.
session.use_trans_sid = 0
; Select a hash function
; 0: MD5   (128 bits)
; 1: SHA-1 (160 bits)
session.hash_function = 0
; Define how many bits are stored in each character when converting
; the binary hash data to something readable.
;; 4 bits: 0-9, a-f
; 5 bits: 0-9, a-v
; 6 bits: 0-9, a-z, A-Z, "-", ","
session.hash_bits_per_character = 4
; The URL rewriter will look for URLs in a defined set of HTML tags.
; form/fieldset are special; if you include them here, the rewriter will
; add a hidden <input> field with the info which is otherwise appended
; to URLs.  If you want XHTML conformity, remove the form entry.
; Note that all valid entries require a "=", even if no value follows.
url_rewriter.tags = "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=,fieldset="

I've done the obvious and simply reinstalled everything however that does not work. I am certain there is a session problem, but I'm not sure where it is being generated from. Again, I've tried quite a few fixes and nothing seems to have worked.

My hosting provider is FatCow.

Here's my server information:

Platform Type:

Debian

MySQL Version:

5.0.77

Perl Version:

5.8.8

PHP Version:

5.2.12

Path to Perl:

/usr/bin/perl

Path to PHP:

/usr/local/bin/php