I've been playing around recently with CivicSpace, a Drupal-based
software package using PHP and MySQL that includes features such as a
blog, a calendar and an email list. After I did a test installation
at a domain where I also have a test installation of MediaWiki
running, I noticed a problem with MediaWiki. Whenever I tried to
access the wiki as a logged-in user, I got the following error
message:
Fatal error: session_start(): Failed to initialize
storage module.
in /usr/www/users/rampton/wiki/User.php on line 146
After some experimenting, I discovered that the problem arises
because Drupal requires adding the the following lines to .htaccess
to modify the PHP configuration:
php_value session.save_handler 'user'
php_value session.cache_limiter none
Once I deleted those lines from .htaccess, the problem went away, and
I was able to get both CivicSpace and the wiki running on the same
server by simply putting a different .htaccess file in the
directories for each package. However, I thought I should call this
error message to the attention of developers here. If anyone ever
wants to develop MediaWiki into a Drupal module, this conflict might
give them some headaches.
--Sheldon Rampton