I've setup the latest version of Zenphoto with the zpbase theme and am finding some album thumbnails are not displaying (only the title). I think this is a server issue as I have installed the same configuration on another host which has the same php version, same virtual memory etc. but works without errors.

I've queried tech support and after many emails including giving them access to the account, can only say Zenphoto is maxing out resources and regenerating images every on load.

There's a message I'm seeing in Zenphoto setup which may have a bearing on the problem as follows:

In the Zenphoto PHP Sessions [problems with save_save_path].
Warning! The configured PHP session path could not be used. Zenphoto has set the path to the zp-data folder.

Also I'm seeing the following error consistently in the logs:
NOTICE: session_start() [function.session-start]: ps_files_cleanup_dir: opendir(/home/wildform/public_html/zp-data/PHP_sessions) failed: Permission denied (13) in /home/wildform/public_html/zp-core/functions-basic.php on line 1590
session_start called from zp_session_start (functions-basic.php [1590])
from i.php [71]

Thanks for any help,
David

Hi,
had the same problem with the session_save path.

Here is how I solved this:
Check the php information from zenphoto backend.
There should be an entry called:
Session.save_path
where you can see the see the default tmp folder.

Mine looks like:
/var/www/mywebspace/phptmp/

Now open the function_basics.php file from the zp-core folder and add a new line right after the php openening tag.
Add this there:
ini_set ( 'session.save_path', '/var/www/mywebspace/phptmp/' );

Please be aware that you are editing a zenphoto core file by adding this, so it is on your own risk and be sure to make a backup of the file before editing.
In my case it solves the problem with the session.save_path.

Cheers
Ralf

Zenphoto does not regenerate images once they have been cached:
http://www.zenphoto.org/news/caching

Other common issues with images not being generated are memory related:
http://www.zenphoto.org/news/problems-with-albums-and-images#thumbnailssized-images-are-not-generated-andor-the

Thanks for your replies Ralf and acrylian

I understood the image cache was generated on-the-fly and used for subsequent access so am surprised to notice only one image in the cache of an album which contains 8 images. It seems the cache images are not being generated or saved where they should be.

So I'm guessing there is something amiss with the session_save path setting (given the error messages) though I haven't been able to resolve the issue after adding the path (in my case '/home/wildform/public_html/zp-data/PHP_sessions') using the ini_set function as described. I also tried adding the /tmp directory and other variations on the above.

Also I had earlier checked out the help topic to troubleshoot image display and set php.ini memory_limit to 128M but this didn't change anything.

I might try reinstalling from scratch, I set up using a script from Cpanel - my error free installation on another host was setup manually.

The error you got is about permissions. So something is not configured or set right. Without solving that permissions error it will not work.

The problem is bascially that the image libary cannot save the image while processing and therefore cannot cache it. Zenphoto sees that there is no cached image of the one requested and therefore tries to cache it. Which fails because…

So this is most likely a config issue on your server. I can only repeat that Zenphoto works fine on pretty standard configured shared webhosting packages for a few euros. That is what it primarily aims at and what I use it with as well (excpet zenphoto.org which is indeed our own server).

Thanks acrylian. That explains the memory spike tech support reckon is the problem as Zenphoto tries unsuccessfully to create the cache images.

I was just playing around with permissions to the configured session_save path which I'm unable to change to 755 - I'll get tech to sort this out and test again.

I think that is best as that is quite server internal and could cause other issues in case you have more stuff on your webspace than ZP.

An update on progress (or not)... After running a permissions fixer tool on the hosting site, was able to change the session_save path to 755 but unfortunately still no image caching. I decided to delete the installation and upload from ftp to setup again.

After reinstalling and testing with the default and Zenpage theme noticed cache images were being created (though still some missing on initial load but fixed on refresh) - also no session_save path error. (I got some improvement of cache generation by setting Caching concurrency to 2 but still not perfect)

Then switched to the zpbase theme, deleted the cache images and browsed back to the albums - this time, some missing thumbnails but no cache images at all. So seems there is an issue with the workings of zpbase and the server I'm using. (or maybe it's the server choking even more with zpbase compared to defaults)

The hosting provider has a utility to customise php.ini to set memory to 128mb and turn off magic_quotes etc. I notice when I use this I get the session_save path error on running ZP setup. Regardless, this error doesn't seem to be related to the thumbnail / cache creation problem. And the additional memory doesn't change anything.

All a bit perplexing and almost time to try another hosting provider :-)

I can't answer anything regarding zpBase being third party. If it works with our official themes it is most likely something on that theme. There has been an update recently regarding blank pages. Maybe try that.

That your host provides the ability to set configuration via php.ini does not mean you can set everything. Especially memory is usually fixed amongst other settings on shared hosts. If you run your own server that might be different. So in short, your server may "lie" about the memory setting. Best ask your host what you actually can set.

But 128mb should be fine. Unless you use huge images naturally.

Yes, it's interesting how different the results can be from what appears to be the same configuration on different hosts.

I've got Zenphoto (with zpBase) running fine on another server with apparently the same resources and setup.

I'll try the latest version of zpBase with the problem host and if there are further issues will work with the developer to try to sort it out - this might help pinpoint what's failing.