Failed to initialize storage module in magento

Question

When I upgraded Magento 1.7 to Magento 1.8 500 internal errors started to come on the page. I have removed this by changing the permission of index files (644).

But still I am facing an issue. 500 Internal error is gone but this error comes:

session_start() [function.session-start]: Failed to initialize storage module: user (path: /tmp)

I am storing the session in database. When I do some R&D, someone suggested to change the session.save_handler = user to session.save_handler = files but when I check PHP configuration, I found the same value.

Please suggest me a way how I can remove this error.

Answer 1

Looks like you don't have write permissions in the folder where magento tries to put the sessions.
In your case that's /tmp, but it shouldn't be that. it should write the sessions in MAGENTO_ROOT_DIR/var/session.

Make sure the var/session folder exists and it is writable.

Answer 2

For me I changed from 'files' to 'db' and was getting this error message. Found out that I never had core_session table in the db so just had to create table.