We just upgraded to PHP 5.3 on our test server to start using the Magento SOAP API. Our PHP 5.2.14 did not have PHP SOAP library installed.
I found that short_open_tags was off and the error logging was not turned on and made changes.
However, I cannot login to my Magento admin. It just spins for a second and then goes right back to the admin login page. No errors or exceptions thrown, no PHP errors logged.
I've made sure TZ was synched, /var/cache directory empty, /var/session directory empty, web/cookie config_data values correct, cleared browser cookie data...
I don't know where else to look or what else to do. Any ideas?
Updating things done:
Even though the config_data says that the time zone is America/Chicago, the code below placed in the adminhtml/login template shows this result:
UTC 08-02-2012 09:40:48 PM
Here's the code used:
echo date_default_timezone_get()."<br />\n";
echo date('m-d-Y h:i:s A');
Same code run from a separate PHP script returns this when run 3 secs earlier:
America/Chicago 08-02-2012 04:40:45 PM
Made changes to /store/app/Mage.php and /store/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Locale.php to set TZ to America/Chicago and the admin login page now says
America/Chicago 08-02-2012 04:44:41 PM
but still no login.
If your admin login attempts are failing without an error being shown it almost always points to a problem with session handling.
Either
core_config_data table for domain names and clear your cache), localhost domain, and running into one of the many browser bugs around cookie setting and localhost domains. Good luck!