phpMyAdmin: Cannot start session without errors

Error:

Cannot start session without errors, please check for errors in your PHP and/or webserver log file, and configure your PHP installation correct.

You receive the error message “Cannot start session without errors” while accessing phpMyAdmin in cPanel. phpMyAdmin will not work if any of the following settings are incorrect on a cPanel server.

1. The owner and group of /var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanelphpmyadmin directory should be cpanelphpmyadmin recursively as by default phpMyAdmin sessions are written under /var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanelphpmyadmin/sessions/ directory.

chown cpanelphpmyadmin /var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanelphpmyadmin -R
chgrp cpanelphpmyadmin /var/cpanel/userhomes/cpanelphpmyadmin -R

The 1st step should fix the issue but if it doesn’t follow the next 2 steps:

2. Change the session.save_path parameter to /tmp in the file /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/etc/phpmyadmin/php.ini i.e. edit the file

pico /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/etc/phpmyadmin/php.ini

change session.save_path as below

session.save_path = /tmp

3. The /tmp directory permissions should be 1777, not 755.

chmod 1777 /tmp