How-to: Fix cgi-bin scripts that give you Error 500

[NIS-Francisco]

If you are getting the following error:

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

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@yoursite.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

First check:

1. You have uploaded the .cgi files to the server thru FTP using ASCII mode (and NOT BINARY).

2. Check that you gave EXECUTABLE permissions to the .cgi scripts (chmod 755)

3. /cgi-bin/ folder should have permissions 755 as well.

If you are still getting errors check your ERROR LOG in your Control Panel, you should see the description of the error, example in this case:

[Wed Dec 21 16:54:00 2005] [error] [client 201.xxx.xxx.xxx] Premature end of script headers: /home2/username/public_html/cgi-bin/guestbook.cgi

Now, the script has coding errors, to make them work try out this workaround:

1. Edit ALL the .cgi files that do not work (the ones you get an error from).

2. Add the following Code after:

#!/usr/bin/perl

Add this after #!/usr/bin/perl :

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

This should work as a workaround.

Thank you.
Francisco
NavigatorIS