An unhelpful error message from Apache httpd

Training, Open Source computer languages

Perl • Python • MySQL • Tcl • Ruby • C & C++ • Lua • Java • Tomcat • PHP • httpd • Linux

Home

Accessibility

"Your program doesn't work". Such reports cause technical support staff to be pulling their hair out. "In what way did it fail" they'll ask, hoping for some clue that can point them towards their caller's problem.

So why does on earth does an Apache httpd web server report:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

whenever anything goes wrong; it's roughly saying "That didn't work" !!

It's intentional! ... Httpd gives a generic message for all failures that may relate to scripts its running and how it's configured exactly so that the web site visitor who gets the message won't be able to work out what's going wrong and won't be able to glean internal / structure information that can help him find any weaknesses there may be.

The web developer who looks after the web server, though, will be able to look in the log files and find a better message - such as:
[Thu Mar 30 20:02:44 2006] [error] [client 192.168.200.66] Undefined subroutine &main::loaltime called at /home/vweb/cgi-bin/t500.pl line 3.
which tells me that the Perl programmer who wrote the script wrote a call to a function loaltime rather than one called localtime ... easily fixed!

If you want to change the less than helpful error message / error response page to your own less that helpful error page, you can use and ErrorDocument directive in your httpd.conf file, of in a .htaccess file if you want to do it on a per-directory basis. Example:
ErrorDocument 500 "/resources/failed500.html"
where the file failed500.html if your error page
(written 2006-03-30 19:13:18)

Associated topics are indexed under

A603 - Web Application Deployment - Further httpd Configuration
P221 - Perl on the Web

Back to
Dressed up for a phone call

Previous and next
or
Horse's mouth home

Forward to
Python to MySQL

Some other Articles

Database design - get it right from first principles
PHP Image viewing application
Ruby course - oops - it's not happening
Python to MySQL
An unhelpful error message from Apache httpd
Dressed up for a phone call
Stopping and restarting Apache httpd cleanly
Web Application Components
Keeping the visitors happy and browsing
The ternary operator in Python

1833 posts, page by page

Link to page ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 at 50 posts per page

This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

Link to Ezine home page (for reading).
Link to Blogging home page (to add comments).

Public Course Enquiry / Booking

Courses that run regularly at our UK training Centre.
[Schedule] - [About] - [Book]