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500 Internal Server Error

by Alan Petersen
5 replies
I have a ticket to my web host. But this seems to happens a few times with my web site. I googled it but I still don't understand what is happening. I'm debating dumping the host. I use 3 web hosts for my businesses and this only happens with Dream Host.

My main blog is hosted there and it's annoying to say the least. I've been trying to update a simple blog post for 40 minutes and I get that error message and then it comes back up but the changes did not take. So I do it again and round and round we go.

What confuses me is that the error message says to contact the "server admin" and has my email address in there. Say what? Me, a server admin... too funny. Is it something I'm doing?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Full error message:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, <snip my email addy was here> 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.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
#500 #error #internal #server
  • Profile picture of the author Undercovercash
    I would also like to hear why this happens. I usually just fix it by changing the hta access file. But why does this happen!

    Btw, I use hostgator and I deal with this quite often.
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    • Profile picture of the author infoman66
      Basically something has gone wrong, but the server can not be more specific about the error condition in its response to the client....

      This error can only be resolved by fixes to the Web server software. It is not a client-side problem. It is up to the operators of the Web server site to locate and analyse the logs which should give further information about the error...
      Mesage: "Please contact us (email preferred) whenever you encounter 500 errors on your CheckUpDown account. We then have to liaise with your ISP and the vendor of the Web server software so they can trace the exact reason for the error. Correcting the error may require recoding program logic for the Web server software, which could take some time."

      (Source: www-checkupdown-com/status/E500-html)
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  • Profile picture of the author mywebwork
    It's probably the most frustrating of all HTTP error messages, as the article that infoman66 quoted said it is a pretty generic message indicating "something went wrong". Kind of like those silly Engine lights on automobiles that only come on when your engine seizes or dies - it doesn't give you any useful information!

    There are literally dozens of possible causes for this error, the most common cause involves CGI scripts. However as you have mentioned a "blog" I'm guessing that you probably have a WordPress site, so CGI or PERL is not the issue here.

    The best (in fact probably the only) way to resolve one of these errors is with the error logs on your web server, the access_log and error_log on an Apache server are the logical ones to check. Another one to check is the suexc_log file, as it will record file permission errors that can result in 500 errors.

    If you are on a shared hosting plan it's even possible that one of your "neighbors" is causing the error - one reason why those 9.95 a month hosting plans aren't all they are cracked up to be.

    You did the right thing opening a ticket as the majority of these errors are a result of a server misconfiguration, which only your host can fix. If it persists you might ask them to move you to another server.

    Best of luck and I hope you get it resolved soon!

    Bill
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  • Profile picture of the author alex.caronet
    Feel fee to contact me so I can help you in this. Most likely its CHMOD issue
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    • Profile picture of the author Alan Petersen
      It's running smooth for now. Basically support told me it's either a script or a big spike of traffic and it conflicts with some monitoring script they use on shared servers.

      The only way to really prevent this from happening is to "Decrease the overall memory" of scripts like Wordpress or move to a VPS or dedicated server. :rolleyes: He gave me some links but that's not my area of expertise messing with scrips to decrease memories. I just click buttons to install them.

      I have all my sites with 3 different hosts maybe it's time for my own dedicated server. Dunno.

      Anyway, here is their response...

      I am sorry to hear of this trouble but I have found the cause.
      Unfortunately, your "snipped" user's php5.cgi processes are being killed
      by our procwatch daemon, and this is the source of the errors you are
      receiving.

      Procwatch is a daemon that runs constantly on shared servers to monitor
      the usage of RAM/CPU and execution time so that no single user can use an
      inappropriately high percentage of the shared resources and impact the
      overall health of the server or the server's ability to serve all users'
      pages.

      When it finds a process that is using too great an amount of resources,
      it kills that process. If it does this to a running script, the resultant
      error the server shows is "premature end of script headers" - the script
      can't complete.

      This is happening regularly with your site. Below please see excerpts
      from that log: (Removed by me).

      In short, what this is saying is that the combined PHP scripts run by the
      user that runs that site ("poveda") is simply using too much memory for a
      shared server. Note this could be a single site, or more than one site -
      with PHP it is hard to tell as each PHP process is only identified as
      php5.cgi. This can be telling us that a single request added to other
      running requests, or a single large request alone, is exceeding
      acceptable memory limits.

      There are only two ways to resolve this:

      1) Decrease the overall memory required for your scripts to process,
      create, and serve your site. With WordPress, there are several things you
      can try to help with this, and you may find some help with that at these
      resources:

      WordPress Optimization - DreamHost
      Wordpress performance - DreamHost
      Wordpress performance - DreamHost

      It is also possible that a spike in traffic, or a heavy run by the
      Googlebot, or another robot, or even abusive hits by a given IP address
      (leaching), could cause this on a short term basis, so you might want to
      inspect your access logs for such activity (you can often mitigate this
      with robots.txt or by blocking abusive IP addresses with .htaccess).

      2) Move the site to a VPS (DreamHost PS), or dedicated server where you
      can reserve sufficient RAM for your own processes to use without
      impacting other users on the server.

      The first approach can prove difficult depending upon your scripts, your
      content, and your expertise, but if you can do that your site can
      continue to run on a shared server without errors. The second alternative
      is simpler, but involves additional cost for the PS services, and
      sufficient RAM to avoid these errors.

      I am sorry if this news is discouraging, but I felt it was important that
      you have the full benefit of knowing what is occurring here so you can
      make the appropriate decision to meet your needs for this site.

      If you have any other questions, or if I can help you further, just let
      me know!
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