Magento Commerce with Fast-CGI and suExec

I have been able to sucessfully install the platform and can access the homepage and user front end just fine. However, when I try to log in to the back end I am getting a 500 internal error message. This is from the users log file:

Code:

[Wed Apr 22 14:30:14 2009] [warn] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 40 seconds
[Wed Apr 22 14:30:14 2009] [error] [client <MY IP>] Premature end of script headers: index.php

This is from the Apache log file:

Code:

[Wed Apr 22 14:28:54 2009] [notice] mod_fcgid: call /var/www/tt.westechsolutions.com/web/index.php with wrapper /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/web35/.php-fcgi-starter
[Wed Apr 22 14:30:14 2009] [notice] mod_fcgid: process 1556 going graceful shutdown, sending SIGTERM
[Wed Apr 22 14:30:20 2009] [notice] mod_fcgid: process /var/www/tt.westechsolutions.com/web/index.php(1571) exit(communication error), terminated by calling exit(), return code: 0

This is my .htaccess file:

Code:

############################################
## uncomment these lines for CGI mode
## make sure to specify the correct cgi php binary file name
## it might be /cgi-bin/php-cgi

#    Action php5-cgi /cgi-bin/php5-cgi
#    AddHandler php5-cgi .php

############################################
## GoDaddy specific options

#   Options -MultiViews

## you might also need to add this line to php.ini
##     cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
## if it still doesn't work, rename php.ini to php5.ini

############################################
## this line is specific for 1and1 hosting

    #AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
    #AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

############################################
## default index file

    DirectoryIndex index.php

<IfModule mod_php5.c>

############################################
## adjust memory limit

#    php_value memory_limit 64M
    php_value memory_limit 128M
    php_value max_execution_time 18000

############################################
## disable magic quotes for php request vars

    php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off

############################################
## disable automatic session start
## before autoload was initialized

    php_flag session.auto_start off

############################################
## enable resulting html compression

    #php_flag zlib.output_compression on

###########################################
# disable user agent verification to not break multiple image upload

    php_flag suhosin.session.cryptua off

###########################################
# turn off compatibility with PHP4 when dealing with objects

    php_flag zend.ze1_compatibility_mode Off

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_security.c>
###########################################
# disable POST processing to not break multiple image upload

    SecFilterEngine Off
    SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

############################################
## enable apache served files compression
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#gzip

    # Insert filter on all content
    ###SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
    # Insert filter on selected content types only
    #AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript

    # Netscape 4.x has some problems...
    #BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

    # Netscape 4.06-4.08 have some more problems
    #BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

    # MSIE masquerades as Netscape, but it is fine
    #BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

    # Don't compress images
    #SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary

    # Make sure proxies don't deliver the wrong content
    #Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>

############################################
## make HTTPS env vars available for CGI mode

    SSLOptions StdEnvVars

</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

############################################
## enable rewrites

    Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine on

############################################
## you can put here your magento root folder
## path relative to web root

    #RewriteBase /magento/

############################################
## workaround for HTTP authorization
## in CGI environment

    RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

############################################
## always send 404 on missing files in these folders

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(media|skin|js)/

############################################
## never rewrite for existing files, directories and links

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l

############################################
## rewrite everything else to index.php

    RewriteRule .* index.php [L]

</IfModule>


############################################
## Prevent character encoding issues from server overrides
## If you still have problems, use the second line instead

    AddDefaultCharset Off
    #AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

<IfModule mod_expires.c>

############################################
## Add default Expires header
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#expires

    ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"

</IfModule>

############################################
## By default allow all access

    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all

############################################
## If running in cluster environment, uncomment this
## http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags

    #FileETag none

It seems very strange to me that the main site works and the admin section doesn't. Although I feel like it might have something to do with the rewrites that the .htaccess file does. I am not very familiar with FCGI/SuEXEC yet so bear with me if I missed something obvious.

 

Unfortunately there is nothing else in the log that shows up when the script fails. I've read in a few places that SuExec doesn't work with php directives in the .htaccess file, so I had commented those out but it didn't help.

 

What happens when you completely remove the .htaccess file?

What's in /var/www/php-fcgi-scripts/web35/.php-fcgi-starter?

 

I get a 404 error when I got to /admin b/c it was using url rewrites and that directory doesn't exist.

My .php-fcgi-starter is:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
PHPRC="/etc/php5/cgi/"
export PHPRC
PHP_DOCUMENT_ROOT="/var/clients/client10/web35"
export PHP_DOCUMENT_ROOT
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN=8
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN
PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS=5000
export PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS
exec /usr/bin/php-cgi $1

 

What's the output of

Code:

ls -la /var/clients/client10/web35/

?
What's the output of

Code:

ls -l /usr/bin/php-cgi

?

Have you tried to restart Apache?

 

Code:

drwxr-xr-x  6 root  root     4096 2009-04-22 14:20 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root     4096 2009-04-15 20:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 web35 client10 4096 2009-04-22 15:19 cgi-bin
lrwxrwxrwx  1 web35 client10   48 2009-04-15 20:15 log -> /var/log/ispconfig/httpd/tt.westechsolutions.com
-rw-r--r--  1 web35 client10  751 2009-04-22 18:19 php.ini
drwxr-xr-x  2 web35 client10 4096 2009-04-15 20:15 ssl
drwxrwxrwx  2 web35 client10 4096 2009-04-15 20:15 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 14 web35 client10 4096 2009-04-24 10:06 web

Code:

root@ispconfig3:~# ls -la /usr/bin/php-cgi 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 2008-09-21 09:08 /usr/bin/php-cgi -> /etc/alternatives/php-cgi

 

Have you tried to restart Apache?

If that doesn't help, try this:

Code:

chown web35:client10 /var/clients/client10/web35

 

I have restarted apache (and even the whole server) and it didn't help. Additionally, I ran the code you suggested and that didn't help either. I also ran:

Code:

root@ispconfig3:~# chown web35:client10 /var/clients/client10/web35
root@ispconfig3:~# chown -R web35:client10 /var/clients/client10/web35/web
root@ispconfig3:~# chmod -R 755 /var/clients/client10/web35/web

To make sure all files were rwx by the web35 user. This didn't help either.

 

Hm, I have no idea what's wrong...

 

Yeah me either. It's kind of a bummer, but luckily I got the site working by installing a previous release. There must be a bug in one of the .htaccess files or php scripts that was causing the 500 error. Hopefully this will be resolved in future releases, though I didn't see anything about it in the community forums. Thanks for all of your help I really appreciate it. Keep it up!

 

Solved

The problem is basically that in 1.3.1+ there are outbound calls made to get some files for widgets in the backend. The process that got me to this conclusion was first setting these apache directives (under options tab in the website):

Code:

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
    IPCConnectTimeout 300
    IPCCommTimeout 360
</IfModule>

I was then finally able to move around the backend without any internal 500 error messages popping up, though it took 3-5min to get from page to page. I kept investigating further and came across the following thread:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/39726/

Basically, you have to disable the widget requests made by the server by doing the following:

Code:

Solution - disable widgets - quick and dirty way!
Edit function canShow:

/app/code/core/Mage/Adminhtml/Block/Notification/Window.php

public function canShow()
{
return false;
} 

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for updating the thread. I get the 500 internal error on some page loads, even on front end. After I get the 500 error, the next page load works, so perhaps its more a memory issue. The entry in the log is what was cause for concern.

I'm on a test server right now, so we'll see how everything goes when working on production.

I'll bookmark this page in case it happens consistently on the backend.

 

Yeah that seems like a different issue than what I ran into.

If that is the case, the apache directives might help you out by increasing the timout length for the scripts to run.