Random 500 Internal Server Error (godaddy)

Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Hi all,

Let me introduce myself. I’ve been a .net developer for 9+ years, and I’ve had my share of IT support in the meantime (mostly managing SQL DB Servers, proxies, a firewell, etc), so I’m quite knowledgeable about computers and stuff.

I’m experiencing random 500 internal server errors on my wordpress installation at godaddy, linux economy plan (shared server). I’ve been running this wordpress blog since March 2010, and i’m getting between 100-300 hits a day (doesn’t sound like a lot). Something like 30 articles, and around 300 comments so far.

The following is the list of active plugins:

AdRotate
Akismet
All in One SEO Pack
Contact Form 7
Excerpt Editor
Facebook Like Button Plugin
Flickr Photo Album
Google XML Sitemaps
LinkWithin
PHPlist
Redirection
Slickr Flickr
Social Homes
TubePress
Twitter Tools
Wordbook
WordPress Database Backup
WP-Polls

It seems that as time passes I’m getting more and more random 500 internal server errors, and I’m worried this may be causing visitors to go away. I just ran an uptime test here http://host-tracker.com/check_res_ajx/5208052-0/share/ out of 81 requests, 31 failed!!! More than 30%! This is more or less in line with my personal subjective findings.

I’ve researched a bit regarding this, it seems lots of people is having problems with wordpress in godaddy. Unfortunately they won’t allow error log access to economy hosting plans, so i cannot do real troubleshooting, just trial and error. How would you suggest troubleshooting this problem? I’m seriously thinking about moving to a different hosting at this point.

Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 28 total)

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Moderator James Huff
(@macmanx)

Volunteer Moderator

13 years, 9 months ago

Internal server errors are usually described in more detail in the server error log. If you have access to your server error log, generate the error again, note the date and time, then immediately check your server error log for anything useful. If you don’t have access to your server error log, ask your hosting provider to look for you.

Thread Starter Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Update: I deactivated all plugins but Akismet. Guess what? I’m still getting 500 internal server error on between a high % of the requests according to Host Tracker (between 30% and 50%!). This is very, very bad.

MacManX, as I stated, unfortunately i don’t have access to my server error log (linux economy plan @ godaddy won’t allow such a “privilege”). I’ll try with a support ticket, but from what I’ve read so far regarding godaddy support, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Thread Starter Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Update: I was on the phone for around 20-30 minutes with godaddy. Guess what? They say that since I’m on economy plan, my hosting account doesn’t even generate logs (something i feel hard to believe), and they “offered” an upgrade to the next level of hosting account so I could get access to the error logs and pinpoint the problem myself, and while at it they would move my hosting to one of the more “robust” web servers (?).

I don’t know what you think, but I feel this is not a very good customer policy. Seems like i have to pay just to get the privilege to access some error log, so I can *start* taking a look at the problem. I mean, upgrading to a higher plan won’t even assure that the problem goes away, just that I’ll be able to try to track down what’s going on…

Moderator James Huff
(@macmanx)

Volunteer Moderator

13 years, 9 months ago

I’m reasonably sure that the error log would point to the exact cause, but that doesn’t always happen.

Start by deactivating all plugins for a while (maybe leave Akismet active). If the 500 errors stop occurring, slowly begin to reactivate each plugin individually until you find the cause.

Thread Starter Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Hi MacManX, thanks for your reply. As I stated, I already tested deactivating all plugins, and the random problem still remains. I also contacted godaddy support via email in a new attempt to get a meaningful response out of them. All I got was a robotic response telling me that “error logs are only available for Deluxe and Unlimited hosting plans” and that “You may wish to consult with a community forum online or do a search on your favorite search engine as other users may have encountered a similar problem”. So, no error logs, no luck. Note that when you go to the products page at godaddy, this error log limitation for economy hosting is not mentioned at all…

I’m probably moving to bluehost, for a change. Godaddy support sucks.

Samuel B
(@samboll)

13 years, 9 months ago

are you on a windows server?
if so, switch to linux in hosting control panel

Thread Starter Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Samuel, no, as stated on my first post i’m on linux economy plan.

🙁

mrmist
(@mrmist)

13 years, 9 months ago

Are you seeing the 500 errors in Internet Explorer? If so, does visiting with another browser allow you to see more detail in the errors. (Probably not, but sometimes the IE pretty errors hide stuff.)

mrmist
(@mrmist)

13 years, 9 months ago

Another option whilst you are looking for other hosting might be to set up a test site on your computer. Export your database and import it to the test site, and load all the plugins/ theme. Then see if you get the errors locally.

Thread Starter Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Thanks for replying mrmist! I’m seeing the error on IE and FF and Chrome. I’ll move the stuff from godaddy to my local LAMP installation and see what goes on…But something tells me everything’s gonna be all right…While investigating this issue I see a ton of people having problems with wordpress+godaddy.

Samuel B
(@samboll)

13 years, 9 months ago

I have been told that godaddy is going to spend time here in the forums helping their users. Wasn’t given a timetable when this would start, but evidently they want to get on our preferred hosting list and will take measures to insure this.

Maybe email their support and refer to this thread?

Moderator James Huff
(@macmanx)

Volunteer Moderator

13 years, 9 months ago

I saw a GoDaddy rep on the forums yesterday, so I’ve added a “godaddy” tag to this topic in hopes that they stop by.

Go Daddy
(@gdhosting)

13 years, 9 months ago

Hi Tom Person,

Sorry to hear this. You’ve probably noticed that 500 Internal Server Errors can be anything from long database queries to incorrect coding. Even large images or the server load could be the cause. Error logs would be helpful in pinpointing the issue and you can upgrade to deluxe at any time so you have access.

Like you mention, you have quite a few plugins on your site. This may be slowing it down and causing the errors. I’d recommend trying out Supercache. Here’s a great link for getting started and FAQ page from WordPress:

http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-install-and-setup-wp-super-cache-for-beginners/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/faq/

In the meantime, we’ll take a closer look at your issue. Thanks!

Alicia
GoDaddy.com

Thread Starter Tom Person
(@nicorad)

13 years, 9 months ago

Ok, since i dont have time to move to a new hosting at the moment I upgraded to deluxe hosting plan. when checking my error logs I could see tons of errors like the following:

[Fri Jul 23 08:21:18 2010] [error] [client 186.49.57.5] (104)Connection reset by peer: FastCGI: comm with server “/var/chroot/home/content/l/a/r/larutadelraid/html-x-httpd-php5” aborted: read failed

[Fri Jul 23 08:21:18 2010] [error] [client 186.49.57.5] FastCGI: incomplete headers (0 bytes) received from server “/var/chroot/home/content/l/a/r/larutadelraid/html-x-httpd-php5”

All right, since I’ve been digging on this for days, i remember reading about people having similar problems. So, I disabled Fast CGI php processor. It seems I’ve got rid of those errors, but now I’m getting tons of the following:

[Fri Jul 23 11:01:26 2010] [error] [client 66.197.227.199] Premature end of script headers: /var/chroot/home/content/l/a/r/larutadelraid/html/index.php

Does this say anything to you?

Moderator James Huff
(@macmanx)

Volunteer Moderator

13 years, 9 months ago

That’s not as descriptive as I’d like it to be, but that error does point to the possibility of a plugin conflict. If you deactivate everything but Akismet for about a day, do the errors stop?