Login issue after updates/upgrades; Boot issue; Session issue

[Aresteb]

Hello, running Hestia for couple of years now, thanks for a great solution and for everyone working and improving on Hestia.

My problem occurred after the latest system apt updates/upgrades - initially ability to login was lost (after password - redirect back to login name); Then after server restart - browser error “Can`t connect to the server” - the “systemctl restart Hestia” helped, but without ability to login as previously explained; Then i perform series of recommendations from community; Here is what been done:

Issue still present - run “systemctl restart hestia” - no effect

cd /var/log/hestia

nano nginx-error.log

2025/03/03 13:50:15 [error] 7166#0: *1 FastCGI sent in stderr: “PHP message: PHP Warning: session_start(): open(/usr/local/hestia/data/sessions/sess_jvr7anlts7ig7pf78irhokdk4f, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13) in /usr/local/hestia/web/inc/main.php on line 2; PHP message: PHP Warning: session_start(): Failed to read session data: files (path: /usr/local/hestia/data/sessions) in /usr/local/hestia/web/inc/main.php on line 2” while reading response header from upstream, client: 176.37.206.155, server: _, request: “POST /login/ HTTP/2.0”, upstream: “fastcgi://unix:/run/hestia-php.sock:”, host: “panel.website.com:4848”, referrer: “https://panel.website.com:4848/login/”

Here is Claude suggestion "Based on all the information you’ve provided, I can now see the full picture. The root issue is a permission mismatch between the PHP-FPM process running as user hestiaweb and the session directory. "

• no effect, same issue.

Also the server disk space on 20% or so;

Any thoughts on what the problem is?

UPD on some clues: Recently the panel web adress was changed, regenerated the certificate - all seems fine; UFW was installed, etc.

[Aresteb]

This is what been found - related to the boot issue and new panel domain name:

[sahsanu]

Show the output of these commands:

/usr/local/hestia/nginx/sbin/hestia-nginx -t
ping -c2 localhost
cat /etc/hosts

@Aresteb

UFW was installed

You shouldn’t use ufw if Hestia is managing the iptables rules.

[Aresteb]

The ufw is to deal with kind of stuff as on image below, maybe i missed it somewhere - is it a more appropriate solution?

Nevertheless the main issues related to latest updates, and php lost connection somewhere, gonna back to it.

UPD. Sorry, about other directives - all are as usual/good.

[Aresteb]

Solution to problem related to boot after updates, in the _shell location block, there’s a reference to localhost:

location /_shell/ {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:8085;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
}

localhost was replaced to: proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8085;
then created the systemd override:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/hestia.service.d/
sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/hestia.service.d/override.conf > /dev/null << EOF
[Unit]
After=network.target network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
EOF

This is part 1/2, the other problem with session, php update broke some configurations.
Any thoughts related to this boot solution?

[Aresteb]

With a session issue - the problems were after the updates/upgrades the Hestia PHP-FPM process was configured with different session paths, Hestia expected sessions in: /usr/local/hestia/data/sessions/, but PHP system configuration pointed to: /var/lib/php/sessions;
Any thoughts on what was cause this?

We are done with issues - server up and cruising.
Once again, many thanks to the Hestia team for all your work on the engine.