Sudden 500 Internal Error on Website/Blank Resources Tree/ Now with Error Log!

So I’ve just lost 5 hours of my life.

I have a ModX site that my client has been managing for a couple of months. (Revolution 2.0.4). The site was working perfectly until today, when the site would throw a 500 Internal error on the homepage and the Resources tree appeared to be empty. She hasn’t done anything other than text updates to the site. This is very sudden.

So I backed up the database and the site files and did an upgrade install to 2.0.7. The problem persisted. I then decided to do a clean install, which mostly worked for about 5 minutes. The site loaded, and the Resources tree showed all the documents in the site. The only thing that wasn’t working were Friendly URLs, and the Site Name on the title bar, which just showed ModX Revolution, instead of the site name. As I dug in to the systems settings to check on that, the manager spazzed out again and the site stopped working. I noticed that the top of the page with the version number had reverted back to 2.0.4.

I did the clean install of 2.0.7 a couple of times again, but haven’t gotten as close as I did the first time with the clean install. Now things are back to the 500 Internal Server error and the incomplete manager. After about 5 minutes of playing around in the manager, the version number at the top reverts to 2.0.4.

I should also mention that I manually cleared the cache folder before the initial clean install.

What gives? I am so confused. Does anyone have any ideas as to what’s going on? This site cannot be down for more than 24 hours. At this point I am just going to call it a night.

System Info:
Linux
Revolution 2.0.4 Traditional (and 2.0.7)
MySQL client version: 5.0.51a
PHP 5.2.0
I’m on Dreamhost if that helps.
Firefox 3.6.13

By the way, I have another client who is on the same host, same set up as this site. Their ModX site is functioning correctly, so that may or may not eliminate server updates from the host.

See if anything here helps:

http://bobsguides.com/modx-upgrade-faq.html

http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Upgrading+from+Versions+Earlier+than+2.0.5

http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Troubleshooting+Upgrades

http://bobsguides.com/modx-installation-faq.html

Thanks. Unfortunately, none of those apply to me. I completely wiped every ModX file from the server and installed 2.0.7. The Resources showed up in the document tree, and the home page loaded but without the template applied. I resaved the home page, and it worked briefly. Then things went awry again. Oh, and it showed 2.0.4 as my version, again.

Would it be stupid for me to just clean install 2.0.4 and see what happens?

Could something be corrupted in the database?

Ok. That didn’t work. So to summarize:

-I am intentionally back to version 2.0.4
-Resource Tree is blank
-Elements tree is perfect
-Files Tree is blank
-500 Server Error when I try to load the site
-Can’t add new resources. Get 500 Server Error

Can any of you experts out there venture a guess as to what happened? I checked the activity log, and it looks like the only things my client has been doing since I handed over the site is create new resources and edit existing ones. Nothing else has changed. The site had been working perfectly for two months before yesterday afternoon.

I welcome your craziest ideas.

Did you clean up core/cache directory manually? browser cache, too?

Quote from: evf at Jan 21, 2011, 10:34 AM

Is this going to turn into a permissions issue?

It looks like it already has.

Zing!

Ok, so I fixed the permissions. I am now on Modx 2.0.7. Based on what I’ve gathered from my research on 500 errors in general, I am going to try to increase my PHP Memory Limit. It’s currently 90MB, which is significantly higher than the recommended amount. This is my last resort before I try to outsource this to one of you ModX geniuses.

The memory limit mainly affects the install phase. Once MODx is installed it doesn’t need that much memory to run. If it’s installed and everything works, you should be OK (though more memory never hurts).

Thanks! Actually, I just got email confirmation from Dreamhost that they’re the problem! This makes me so happy, yet makes me want to kill someone:

I’ve checked into why you’ve been receiving these internal server errors,
and it seems your scripts have been getting automatically killed by our
Process Watcher due to your sites going over Memory limits on the shared
server:


2011-01-21 13:22:57 procwatch2 INFO: Process(pid=12842, name=’php5.cgi’,
uid=xxxxxx(####), tty=None, cpu=4.4, rss=35368.0,
vsize=142664.0): kill for total RAM


I would highly recommend that you follow the steps in the following wiki
article in order to reduce your usage:


http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Finding_Causes_of_Heavy_Usage


I’d also recommend looking into any 3rd party plugins you may be running,
especially if you happen to be running Wordpress installs as they can be
notoriously poor at memory management. (Secret Tip: Removing them from
the plugins directory is more effective then simply disabling them)


Lastly, you may want to look into DreamhostPS, as you will be able to
raise your memory limits to whatever limit you’d like.


After you’ve taken the steps in the wiki above, if you find that you
require further assistance in reducing your usage please let me know.


I found some people running Drupal that are having the same issue on Dreamhost. They have some tips that I am going to try.

This problem has been mostly resolved by repairing the site_content table. Now the only issue is getting Friendly URLs to work without without the problem repeating itself.