Re: Help please, error message no. 500 with POST

Brad Cox (bcox@gmu.edu)
Sun, 19 Nov 1995 09:32:46 -0500


>        This server has encountered an internal error which prevents it
>from fulfilling your
>        request. The most likely cause is a misconfiguration. Please ask
>the administrator
>        to look for messages in the server's error log.

The web server provides that stupid message whenever perl has a problem *of
any nature*; i.e. syntax error, etc, anything. To debug the problem, you'll
need to locate the web server's error_log (try looking for
/usr/local/htdocs and browse around) and get the exact details from there.

Does anybody know how to eliminate this stupid problem; i.e. to feed all
such diagnostics to the html output and not the error_log?

This held me up for months. Its the single biggest obstacle to budding cgi
script-builders. I'm not even *allowed* access to error_log; had to do some
minor well-intentioned cracking to even get my own error messages.

--
         Brad Cox; GMU Pgm on Social and Organizational Learning
       Email bcox@gmu.edu; Phone (703) 968-8229 Fax (703) 934 1578
         Middle of Nowhere web, a project with paradoxical goals
                      http://web.gmu.edu/bcox