PHP 500 Internal Server Errors

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500 Internal Server Errors are one of the most common PHP issues that I see customer experience, and it will occur mostly on servers with suPHP or PHP running as CGI.  These errors can be caused by something on the server, or an issue on the user’s site. Here ‘s what you should do if you see errors:

Check the logs

You can solve most problems quickly just by looking at the logs:

/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

/usr/local/apache/logs/suphp.log

Here are some common errors:

SoftException in Application.cpp:357: UID of script "/home/user/public_html/test.php" is smaller than min_uid

SoftException in Application.cpp:422: Mismatch between target UID (511) and UID (510) of file "/home/user/public_html/test.php"

SoftException in Application.cpp:264: File "/home/user/public_html/test.php" is writeable by others

These are all permission/ownership issues, indicating that the owner of the PHP file being called in incorrect, or the permissions are higher than what is allowed in suphp.conf.

Invalid directions in .htaccess

If you’re running PHP in CGI or suPHP mode, you can’t use php_flag or php_value directives in .htaccess – you either need to use htscanner to allow Apache to parse those commands, or make php-related changes in php.ini within the user’s account. You can check the Apache error log in /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log to see if you get something like this:

/home/user/public_html/.htaccess: Invalid command 'php_flag', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

If the error log indicates a problem with .htaccess, you need to remove the directives indicated and make sure your ssyntax is correct, and that they are in the correct places.

Incorrect ownership or permissions

PHP scripts and their immediate parent folder will usually have permissions limits when PHP runs in CGI/suPHP mode. By default, PHP files and their parent folders can not have group or ‘other’ writable permissions, and cannot be owned by a user on the system other than than the user that owns the home folder it is located in. Additionally, cPanel’s implementation of suPHP does not allow PHP to execute via browser from locations that are not inside a user’s home folder. The first thing you should check is that the PHP script and its parent folder(s) are not writable by ‘group’ or ‘other’, or owned by a different system user. You can usually see if this is an issue by tailing the suphp log in /usr/local/apache/logs/suphp.log, or whatever the suphp.conf has set as the log location.

You can adjust suPHP’s permissions allowances in /opt/suphp/etc/suphp.conf to allow ‘group’ and ‘other’ writable permissions if it’s necessary by modifying these values:

allow_file_group_writeable=false
allow_file_others_writeable=false
allow_directory_group_writeable=false
allow_directory_others_writeable=false

If the problem is with the min_uid value being too low (such as if you’re running a PHP script as root), you can also modify the “min_uid” and “min_gid” values to be more permissive. Changing anything in the suphp.conf requires a restart of Apache.

SuPHP binary missing its “sticky” permissions

Take a look at the suphp binary. It should look a bit like this, and in most shells, will be highlighted in red:

-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 341K Mar 30 12:25 /opt/suphp/sbin/suphp*

If it’s missing the ‘s’ in the permissions column, you need to re-add the sticky bit to allow users on the system to execute it properly:

chmod +s /opt/suphp/sbin/suphp

Last resort

If all else fails, you could be running a bum Apache build.  Try running EasyApache to reinstall to see if that fixes the problem.  You can also submit a support request to us and we may be able to fix this for you:

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21 Comments

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  3. mathanraj Reply

    Hi here i’m working on a page inbox.If i’m trying to do any function it is updating but the page goes to internal error 500. Can any one help me

    Module FastCgiModule
    Notification ExecuteRequestHandler
    Handler PHP via FastCGI (*.php)
    Error Code 0x80070102
    Requested URL http://www.hitbullseye.com:80/index.php?action=inbox
    Physical Path C:HostingSpaceshitbullshitbullseye.comwwwrootindex.php
    Logon Method Anonymous
    Logon User Anonymous

    this is the detailed error

  4. Eric Gillette Reply

    Of course, this site helps again.

    Just had a client with ZenCart malfunctioning.

    Turned out the root user owned his files, since I had untarre’d the ZenCart installation file on his server.

    Search in Google revealed this page.

    Thanks again Vanessa!

  5. Hannah Reply

    Hi Vanessa, I’m trying to do a secure installation of WordPress and having trouble with this very thing. What I want is to redirect all traffic to https://www.wineoceroswineclub.com. My htaccess redirect is as follows:
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^wineoceroswineclub.com$ [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.wineoceroswineclub.com$
    RewriteRule ^/?$ “https://www.wineoceroswineclub.com/” [R=301,L]

    and wp-config site settings are:
    define(‘WP_HOME’,’http://www.wineoceroswineclub.com’);
    define(‘WP_SITEURL’,’https://www.wineoceroswineclub.com’);

    yet I can only access the site here: http://www.wineoceroswineclub.com/wp-admin/login.php/

    and clicking the login link, the redirect works properly, taking me to https://www.wineoceroswineclub.com/wp-login.php, yet I get an internal server error, with a 500 internal server error encountered when trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    Checking my error log gives me this: mismatch between target UID and UID of file “/home/wineocer/public_html/index.php”, referer: http://www.wineoceroswineclub.com/wp-admin/login.php/

    I have tried every possible combination of http://, https://, www. and non-www. settings for the site url and this is as good as it gets so far. Can you clue me in to what I’ve done incorrectly?

    Thanks so much, Hannah

  8. Edmund Reply

    I searched on your website to find out the problems associated with error log 500.shtml (internal server error), you seem quite experienced in this regard. The following are the detected errors in the Error Log CPanel:
    [Wed April 04 10:12:59 2012] [error] [client 180.76.xxx.xx] File does not exist: / home/MySite/public_html/500.shtml
    [Wed April 04 09:53:25 2012] [error] [client 110.85.xxx.xxx] File does not exist: / home/MySite/public_html/500.shtml, referer: referer name
    There are several questions that I ask:
    Does this 500 error mostly occur on the website or the hosting site server. FYI, I use a shared hosting site.
    May the 500 errors occur in the .htaccess script of my website or the hosting site server?

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  13. SGhosh Reply

    Gid mismatch error:

    In case, you had changed the permissions please restart apache and/or nginx for the permissions to take affect.

    1. Condor Reply

      Hey there,

      I spent quite a bit of time messin around with WHM to try and resolve the evil 500 Internal server error, finally got it working , here’s the settings. Hope it may help someone who has the same issue. =) P.S drop me an email to let me know if i resolved you’re issue, cheers!
      =========

      In WHM… click on Configure PHP and suEXEC;

      Current Configuration

      Option Configured Value
      Default PHP Version (.php files) 5
      PHP 5 Handler cgi <<<<< NOT suPHP

      Apache suEXEC on
      Apache Ruid2 off
      Alter Configuration

      Option Value
      Default PHP Version (.php files)
      PHP 5 Handler

      Apache suEXEC

      2. sagar Reply

        hi my website is http://www.oseaweb.com , i am facing internal seraver error 500, plz help me i have been putting so much time since last 4 month but still error is not solved. plz kind help,, my email id is . i will give you server id and password plz solve it plz.

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  16. shreya Reply

    Hello pls give me solution about my site.
    my site is blocked because of virus.
    Error: server error 500
    so please give me solution.

  17. John Barson Reply

    I’ve been suffering http 500 errors and PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 41943040 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 32768 bytes). I tried the WordPress htaccess memory limit fix, no go, ssh into the server and change the PHP memory limit, no go. This morning I thought I would just go through the WHM config. I typed PHP in the search and scrolled down and clicked on MultiPHP INI editor. In the “Configure basic settings of a PHP” I selected the ea-php72 version. In the configuration I scrolled down to the memory_limit settings to find out it was configured to only 32mb. I changed it to 256mb and that solved all of my problems. I had upgraded the centos 7.5 server from PHP 5.6 a while ago to PHP v 7.2. I must have missed that setting somehow when I was doing the upgrade. And that setting was overriding all of the other fixes I had attempted. Can’t believe it was such a simple stupid fix after all of that work.

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