HTTP 500 error...

kunoSTAR · 07-25-2005, 04:07 AM

I'm going to warn you now, this is going to sound funny...

I'm having this problem with my phpBB forums and my Mambo, but I dont think its a scripting error or a single database error.

You see, what happens is when someone posts the word form in a topic on the forums or if its in an article I put on mambo, there is an internal server error. This even happens with words like "perform", "transform", "sandstorm", etc... and has even occurred with words like "warm", "arm", and "cat". I know these are the words because I would post information piece by piece until I get to the word that causes the problem.

Why this happens, I have no idea. I didnt have this problem until June 17 and my site has been up since May 28th. I didnt make any scripting changes to my phpBB or Mambo (especially not Mambo) before June 17th... and it affects both of my MySQL databases (mambo and phpbb are on separate databases). But I will say this: June 17th there was a problem with my site and it was down... I believe it was a server problem (on IonHosting's behald) and ever since then, I've had the problem.

I know nothing about MySQL except it runs my site... same with Apache. What should I do? Can anyone help me? This thing is really annoying and is upsetting the members of my community. I appreciate any help anyone gives... especially if it helps.

Thanks in advance.

CreativeLogic · 07-25-2005, 12:32 PM

In your public_html folder look for a file named .htaccess

Let us know what the contents of that file says.

jaswinder_rana · 07-25-2005, 12:58 PM

strange, now what exactly is the error, and is it possible for you to post a test link, so we can test it (post some example to test it too,), that might be more helpful

kunoSTAR · 07-25-2005, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryan

In your public_html folder look for a file named .htaccess

Let us know what the contents of that file says.

well i have a .htaccess that doesnt say anything and a htaccess.txt that says

Quote:

##
# @version $Id: htaccess.txt,v 1.5 2005/01/22 23:00:27 spacemonkey Exp $
# @package Mambo
# @copyright (C) 2000 - 2005 Miro International Pty Ltd
# @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU/GPL
# Mambo is Free Software
##

#
# mod_rewrite in use
#

RewriteEngine On

# Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL
# is not directly related to physical file paths.
# Update YourMamboDirectory (just / for root)

# RewriteBase /YourMamboDirectory

#
# Rules
#

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php

http://evo-star.com/phpbb

username: test
password: test

Go into a forum and try posting "Sonic, one of the greatest pioneers of platform gaming to this day..."

then when u get the error, press the back button and remove the word "platform" or even change it to "platforN" and you'll see that it will successfully post. That same thing happens with mambo.

4fingers · 07-25-2005, 11:40 PM

Firstly try and contact your host to see if they can look in at there server error logs to see if they can get any specific information about the problem.

Although since the problem happened once the server was updated it is possible the your host reconfigured/instaled mod_secuity which is a module that the apache web server your on could be using. The issue with it is that it is catching certain key words in its filter and thinks it is a hacking atempt. Try and get your host to reconfigure it if that is the case.

They sometimes use htaccess.txt so that when you upload the file it doesnt override the current .htaccess file that you have. So I dought that current htaccess.text file actually does anything at the moment.

If anyone has any other ideas dont mind me

jaswinder_rana · 07-26-2005, 12:07 AM

if possible, try to post the error log

kunoSTAR · 07-26-2005, 12:34 AM

Here is the error log... dont know if this will help

[Mon Jul 25 19:16:54 2005] [error] [client 141.149.38.108] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/404.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 19:16:54 2005] [error] [client 141.149.38.108] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/phpbb/images/house/nohouse.gif
[Mon Jul 25 19:07:07 2005] [error] [client 24.141.92.219] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 19:06:26 2005] [error] [client 24.141.92.219] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 19:02:56 2005] [error] [client 24.141.92.219] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 19:00:07 2005] [error] [client 24.141.92.219] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 18:57:20 2005] [error] [client 141.149.38.108] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/404.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 18:57:20 2005] [error] [client 141.149.38.108] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/phpbb/images/house/nohouse.gif
[Mon Jul 25 18:53:18 2005] [error] [client 213.78.186.52] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 18:21:48 2005] [error] [client 213.78.186.52] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 18:20:06 2005] [error] [client 66.108.109.174] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/404.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 18:20:06 2005] [error] [client 66.108.109.174] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/phpbb/images/house/nohouse.gif
[Mon Jul 25 18:18:01 2005] [error] [client 213.78.186.52] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 18:16:47 2005] [error] [client 213.78.186.52] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/500.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 16:48:33 2005] [error] [client 212.113.164.100] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/404.shtml
[Mon Jul 25 16:48:33 2005] [error] [client 212.113.164.100] File does not exist: /home/kuno/public_html/phpbb/images/house/nohouse.gif

And I tried contacting them before, but all they said was

"Dear Customer,

Unfortunately, we do not provide third party scripting support. This is however avaialble upon request for an additional fee. Please let us know if you are interested.

Regards,
ION Hosting"

Should I try bothering them again?

4fingers · 07-26-2005, 01:28 AM

yeah those errors seem to be mainly file does not exist errors and not actually internal error messages and they dont seem to be related to the phpBB.

Did you try asking them about the mod_secuity module if they had changed it in any way, like I said in my last post.

Although tbh I dont think this will be a PHP problem in phpBB code but I am still intrested in what happens

kunoSTAR · 07-29-2005, 04:29 PM

Here is what happened with the email:

------------------------------------------------
Dear Customer,

Unfortuantely, we cannot make any modifications to our server's configuration files. These are preset for a reason by our system administrator. All third party scripts we cannot provide support for. Service is available for third party scripts but only at additional cost. Please let us know if you are interested.

Regards,
ION Hosting
support@ionhosting.com
http://www.ionhosting.com

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:03:32 -0400, kunoshinobi@gmail.com wrote:
> Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
> Alesha Randolph (kunoshinobi@gmail.com) on July 28th, 2005
>
> domain: evo-star.com
> realname: Alesha Randolph
> email: kunoshinobi@gmail.com
> message: Dear Technical Support,
>
> I sent an email out a couple weeks ago about a HTTP 500 Internal Server error that people get when they post the word "form" or any other word containing -orm, -arm, and sometimes even the word "cat". I also asked others for some help and I was told to ask you if you had installed or reconfigured mod_secuity to filter out certain words. That sounds like a logical explanation for these problems, since I didnt have them until after there seemed to be some server updates on June 17th. Please let me know whats going on and if you can help fix it without an additional charge. Thank you in advance.
>
> Alesha Randolph
>
>
> -------- Env Report --------

Man...

4fingers · 07-29-2005, 06:33 PM

Oh I just hate those emails that help in no way what so ever. Firstly I doesn't even look like they even looked at it to see if it was causing the problem. They say they cant do anything because the settings are preset by the system administrator. Who is probably a contract worker who pays by the hour and isn't there on site and they can't be bother to send him in.
They are so blantly wanting you to sign up for 3rd party script support. I have no idea what good what will do since it may not be the scripts fault at all. Unless you have edited the php files at all? But I doubt that a program that has had many years of work done to it and where over thousands of people use it aroud the world will be able to be fixed by a hosting company.
I can see that at this stage they are not wanting to even touch on the subject that they might of missconfigured their server.

I suppose the only thing you can do is search around to look for other explanations, although there are few. You could also try a fresh intstallation in a different folder and making a different database and seeing if the problem is the same. That way you know it's not because of some setting that you might have changed.

You could also try and have a look round to see if other people are having the same problem and are on the same host as you. Proving that you are not just a one of case.

You could also try and make a simple script that use a form that will use the post method to send the data to the server. Where if you get the same error when posting data in the form and there are no errors in your code you could show them that.

Hopefully you are able to grab their attention somehow or find another possibility for the error.

Otherwise you could always switch hosts :P

Hope that helped or gave you some ideas. If anyone else wants to add any other Ideas dont let me stop you.

jaswinder_rana · 07-29-2005, 08:48 PM

thats right, i searched for that error over the internet and found this kinda a problem is frequent, and its with perl too.
so it looks like a server issue. and the exact smae problem as kunoSTAR has, is somebody having with wordpress. (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/20423)

and google returns this http://www.google.ca/search?hs=C0a&h...G=Search&meta=

it might help you to see, you are not alone :D

kunoSTAR · 08-05-2005, 02:54 AM

Yea, it does feel good to not be alone with this problem... but I'm a bit scared to use that tool to try to fix it.

Plus, I only have two databases and mambo and phpbb take up both of them... so I cant test it. I think I'll try the form thing... maybe it will work.

clenard · 08-05-2005, 06:08 AM

Yeah, a 500 Error is the HOSTS problem... it's definately an Apache thing - and they'd have to fix it. I can't believe they gave you that B.S. Reply though!

There's so many hosts out there that would take your business - I would think about that one ;)

jaswinder_rana · 08-05-2005, 01:14 PM

i agree, hosting is so much cheaper now,(ofcourse you et what you pay for), but still it isn't that costly now with too many features.

i'll also suggest to change your host in case its not solved

4fingers · 08-05-2005, 03:07 PM

What you can try and do is upload a php page with the following code in it:

PHP Code:


			
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html>

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<title>Test page for 500 HTTP error</title>

</head>



<body>



<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>" >

  Message<br />

  <textarea name="message" ></textarea><br />

  <input type="submit" name="submit"/>

</form>



<?php

if(isset($_POST['submit'])) {

    $message = $_POST['message'] ;

    echo "Message 1: " . $message . "<br>";

}

?>

</body>

</html>

Then see if you get the Internal 500 error with this simple script and if you do you then you have a good chance that your host will listen to you as that script does work and I am sure other people can verify that.

If they come back saying sorry please pay for script support when obvously the script is not the cause of the problem then I don't see why you have to pay for their mistakes. I would then advise you to change hosts.

clenard · 08-05-2005, 08:13 PM

I would change anyways... I mean with the response you got - it's like walking into "Wal Mart" or some Major retail chain and not getting help... it's just not possible! and if a Sales Associate gives you attitude a MANAGER will take care of it...

in your case you got slapped down by a "sales associate" twice now, right? Sounds to me you need to go to a better place with better "customer service"...