Okay... I'm sat here happily working on my webpage.. when wow... WOW... this is SO slow loading!! So I play around with a few things.. I rename my includes/ directory, so I know its nothing in there... that leaves on thing it could be. My index.php. so, I open that and comment out EVERYTHING at the top:

PHP Code:

session_start();
ob_start();
include_once("includes/headers.php"); 


...And the page loads instantly.

I uncomment the include_once line and the ob_start line.. and it loads instantly again. I uncomment the session_start line and... wow, so slow!

And here, I dont mean slow as in 2 seconds... more like 8 minutes to actually get the page to connect, then another 2 to get it to load up.


Has anyone had trouble with session_start this way or have any info on why this is happening? This has really confused me.. for over a year and a half I've been using session_start ive not had any trouble with it, until now...


Thanks,
AxE

EDIT: FYI - It went okay again about two minutes ago.. now its gone bad again... maybe a server problem or a server lag? I'll see what its like tommorow morning.

It really sounds like a server traffic issue - generally, applications will run faster on the second try after a change (many hosts like to install Zend or another application-caching resource saver) - eight minutes is ridiculous - and it exceeds the 30-second default timeout for a PHP script (usually set in the PHP.INI file) - maybe it's time to hop hosting providers, eh..?

Do you know where your session data is being stored? ./tmp or a database for example? Either of these could be causing the slowdown and may well be located on a different system to the one serving your pages.

Thanks for the replies...

Seems to have sorted itself again now.. must have been a server hiccup :S

danlefree - I think my host may have removed/changed the max execution time, as sometimes when I accedentally have an endless loop in my script, if I leave it (to get a coffee or whatever), when im back its still trying to load.. thats like 10 minutes later usually...

ElectricSheep - not sure mate.. im using the default session stuff to my server, but knowing my host something will have been changed :P