MODx website gives error 500 to search engines

Note, this is a site from where I first started supporting MODx in 2006-7. At some point, such as the use of manager to install or update a plugin, or update MODx itself (maybe unlikely, since IIRC 0.9.6 was the thing before I started), /manager/includes/config.inc.php was CHMODded by MODx to 600 instead of 644.

This gives a 500 to server response checker and causes zero html to be output to search engines. Of course causing the site in question to be excluded from all search results, bar any text files it finds in some subdirectory.

I found this bug by systematically removing php code from index.php, until I hit the include and knowing there must be no 777 files in the path of bots, I checked the CHMOD.

I found no forum for bug reports at all. So I post it here and hope mods will move it to where it belongs.

Indeed, the blame might not be the manager. Certainly, I did not change the attributes, so the source is a component with access to the file. But there are a few sites out there that perhaps might not easily be upgradable to MODx 2, so it would be a nice gesture with a small fix.

If this fix has already been released, please keep this post anyway to be found by others searching for the same error. This will save face for them visa vi their web hosts, who will stoneface them and say that their tech support doesn't include debugging scripts. In this case, they were semi-correct.

I can provide proof of this on demand, but so can any user of 0.9.6 of course.

Can't seem to edit. Well, it seems that was premature. I'm checking that /home/www/scoopex1988.org/manager/includes/config.inc.php is a valid path to the file, else some setting in it conflicts with bots.

The lines down to this line gives server response 200, if I leave it I get error 500. No other lines are present before the closing ?>.

$dbase = '`bitbrain_scx`';

I've tried

$dbase = 'bitbrain_scx';

and

$dbase="bitbrain_scx";

The database name is correct. What gives?

There is a variable conflict. Only if I change the variable name does the error 500 go away.

The same applies to setting $this->config['dbase']=anything.

dbase is obviously a reserved word in PHP5.2 and up. I can downgrade to 4.0 or upgrade. Advice?

Not sure on a solution for the problem you're having here, but can you not upgrade to Evo 1.0.6, unless there's a lot of custom snippets i've found the it to be a pretty straight forward process. In fact even the custom snippets have normally worked. Upgrading to Evo is a lot more straight forward then moving it to 2.2.

0.9.6 is vulnerable to malicious attacks, i've had a few that have be compromised which i why i made it a priority to upgrade. I would really recommend you doing this first.

I would love to respond that I won't upgrade MODx because it would take too much work.

Too much work is what I've just spent on this issue, though.

Even more work beyond this is unthinkable, however. Next site I might consider a fresh install of what brand new things MODx has to offer, if I like what I see

The solution for my host was SetEnv PHPVERSION 4 in .htaccess. Addtype also worked if I added the .html suffix I used for the SEF urls.

The lessons from this is to only upgrade PHP version (using .htaccess) on the sites you have that demand it. (Still ogling the response from the host that they don't auto-upgrade with a suspicious look, they sure upgraded the CPanel around that time.)

And that the string 'dbase' must never be a word in a .php file. Spread the word.

Hello,

I suspect BennyB is correct in that upgrading the site to 1.0.6 will correct the problem, there have been countless fixes between 0.9.6 and 1.0.6, including some major security fixes.

I would also highly recommend using PHP 5.3.x or at the very least 5.2.x. Support for php 4 was ended some time ago, and even support for 5.2.x has been dropped for the most part (seeing as how php 5.4.x is released).

I don't know your hosts policy against compromised websites, but the combination of php 4 and modx 0.9.6 you are at high risk for being hacked.

In regards to the original question, do you have the SEO Strict URLs plugin installed? I know that caused 500 errors on one of my sites.