I'm trying to download software from a specific site, and no matter what I try to download I get this 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, webmaster@******.com 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.
How is this resolved?
•
I'm all too familiar with this error. I see it all the time when setting up or making changes to web sites.
The good news? It's not your fault.
The bad news? There's nothing you can do.
•
Quite literally an "Internal Server Error" is an error on the web server that you're trying to access. That server is misconfigured in some way that is preventing it from responding properly to what you're asking for.
Aside from informing the site owner - which may, or may not, be the "webmaster" email address that's included in the error message - there's absolutely nothing you can do to resolve this problem, because it's not your problem. The person who is responsible for the website needs to fix it.
So what if that's you? What if you're the webmaster?
Nine times out of 10, this error results from one of two very common errors:
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An error in a cgi script that caused it to fail or output an error message before it started producing valid HTML. It happens to me all the time if I have a syntax error in one of my Perl cgi scripts.
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A permissions issue attempting to access a cgi script. Depending on how your web server is configured, quite often it's not enough for the script to have "execute" permission, but it must also be owned by the correct user, and belong to the correct group. I can't tell you what that should be, since it varies widely from server to server (and even site to site on the same server). My best recommendation is to look at the attributes of a script that's working, and copy that.
The format of the error described here is common for Apache web servers. That means we can also look for common error logs. Once again, the location of these logs can vary a great deal based on the specific web server configuration.
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access_log is the log of successful accesses. On a shared or virtual hosting server there may be many of these, one per web site, often with site-specific names, or in site-specific locations on the server.
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error_log is the log of errors. One some hosts, there is an error log per site. On others, though, even though each site may have its own access_log, there may only be a single error_log for the system.
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suexec_log is the log most people forget about. This log deals with the permissions used to execute cgi and other scripts. When a cgi fails to execute because its ownership is wrong, the generic "Internal Server Error" shows in the error log, but a more specific error detailing the permissions involved shows in this log.
And for the record, the message: "Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument..." indicates a second configuration error. When the web server encounters an error, the page it displays to report the error is actually just another .html file stored on the server. In all likelihood, the website has been configured to use "custom" error pages (meaning that the website can provide its own custom error messages), but the custom error pages were never created or configured.
Article C2649 - May 10, 2006
That's what I ask and I'm having, what should I do? to overcome this Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was Unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, and inform [email link removed] Them of the time the error occurred, and anything you have done that May Might 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.
Apache/2.2.15 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 mod_ssl/2.2.15 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at [bad link removed] Port 80
05-Jun-2010
Posted by: Petrus Purnomo at June 5, 2010 5:43 AM
Yeah im trying to access some website, however its the only one which gives me the internal server error. Started happening today.
Posted by: KiRe at June 16, 2010 7:13 PMOur website sometimes gets this error. I use a cgi script called Easy File Manager (EFM) to manage clients' uploads and downloads. I asked the support at EFM and they said that if the script works once it should work all the time. This seems to make sense. What do you think?
13-Jul-2010
Posted by: Geoff Stacey at July 12, 2010 8:18 AM
I have been using aMSN with Mac OS X version 10.6.4 for over a year with very little problems and today the 30 jul 10 it has come up with internal server error and wont work.
Posted by: Terry Priestley at July 30, 2010 7:54 AMWhat can i do?
Any (layman term) help would be appreciated.
Terry
I had a similar problem but found that things started working when I removed the .htaccess file. Played around with it for a bit and found that the following lines were causing the problem:
# Set some options.
Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks
# Set the default handler.
DirectoryIndex index.php
I just restored the original .htaccess, deleted those lines.
Posted by: porckypine at July 31, 2010 1:26 AM