Topic: 500 Internal Server Error

[Dr Obbins]

I just got set up on the new hosting service on Tuesday this week. The website had been set up and operational for over 5 years on e-rice. Lucky, on the day before e-rice died, I did a complete backup of the website. The website cavecountryweather.com has been working well on the Lunarpages host until this morning.

I have done a search on the error and it seems the most common causes could be the .htaccess file or the php.ini file. I tried to temporary delete these files, but still got the same error. Other potential issues could be the php scripts, but everything was working well last night and nothing there has changed. There is nothing in the server access log. has been working well on the Lunarpages host until this morning.

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

[ALITTLEweird1]

I could be wrong, but i believe a 500 error is a problem on the host side, nothing that you did.

[saratogaWX]

500 errors can be caused by too many PHP processes on the webserver to handle, so it aborts new PHP requests until the load settles down.  It can also be caused by a runaway script (a script that include() itself), or a fatal PHP syntax error in an included() script.

Check your error logs, and contact your tech support for help resolving the issue if the error logs don't point out where the problem is.

[Dr Obbins]

I received this reply from the help desk. Does this sound unusual?

I have checked and see that your account has reached the allowed resources usage on the server, which is causing the 500 Internal Server Errors.

CPU / Memory workload Statistic:

Date                   %CPU          %Memory
10/22/2014      2.00            4.08
10/23/2014      2.00            4.36
10/24/2014      2.00            4.29
10/25/2014      0.00            3.77

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Get back with support, see if they can tell you which script is causing the issue... I had installed a search engine years ago that was running wild... should be simple.

Mike

[saratogaWX]

Also, if you just copied over your .htaccess from a different hoster, there may be incompatible settings in it causing the issue.

[Bunty]

Also, if you just copied over your .htaccess from a different hoster, there may be incompatible settings in it causing the issue.

Very true.  The php directives I had in my .htaccess file to deal with a new php edition of erice were incompatible when I ditched erice to get on board with a new host.  It resulted in an internal server error page.

[Dr Obbins]

Get back with support, see if they can tell you which script is causing the issue... I had installed a search engine years ago that was running wild... should be simple.

Mike

The only one I could get a hold of was the sales dept. He was very helpful in his capacity, but the support dept is not open during evenings and weekends. Being as I hold a regular day job, this is as good as not having any support. 24/7 support is available for ~$35 per month. 

Also, if you just copied over your .htaccess from a different hoster, there may be incompatible settings in it causing the issue.

So how do I go about troubleshooting this issue?

[saratogaWX]

On another forum it was suggested that .htaccess entries like:

php_value memory_limit 32M
php_value allow_url_fopen On
php_value display_errors 0
php_value error_reporting 30719

may be incompatible.

You can try removing them from the .htaccess, and adding to a php.ini file in the document root:

allow_url_fopen On
error_reporting E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_STRICT & ~E_DEPRECATED

instead.

[Dr Obbins]

I will give that a shot, however I received this message from their support crew:

I have checked and see that your account has reached the allowed resources usage on the server, which is causing the 500 Internal Server Errors.

Would the 2 be related?

[saratogaWX]

'bad' entries in .htaccess can cause the 500 errors to be displayed.

At 2%cpu, your site is hardly a load.. I'm guessing that the .htaccess is what is causing the issue.

[Dr Obbins]

I made the changes you suggested, but still offline. Do you think it will take time for the change, or should it be instant?

[saratogaWX]

should be 'instant'.

Can you copy your .htaccess to a htaccess.txt file and send me a copy webmaster @ saratoga-weather.org and I'll take a look.

[Dr Obbins]

Will do

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

Dave, this is screwy... check your PMs... there is something messy going on in what should be your public_html .... if they in fact have you on an Apache/Linux...

[Dr Obbins]

Well trying to do something, I switched from Lunarpages to 1and1 and the internal server error followed me there. So evidently the issue is with my website setup and not either hosting service. The web files I am using were downloaded the day before erice went down and were working just fine. At this point I am thinking of either starting over, or throwing in the towel and just upload to WU.

I thought hobbies were supposed to be fun. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue

[Dr Obbins]

I downloaded and installed a fresh copy of the Saratoga template and the site is back up and working. I needed to clean up all the orphaned and outdated files that had collected over the years anyway.