Server crashing every hour or so returning a 500 error

February 5, 2018 1k views
Control Panels Apache Caching Nginx Ubuntu 16.04
82853b9b4cd25d33179cf13ba3252ec63e07ae4e
By:
onlymushu

Hey there,

My server "4 GB Memory / 80 GB Disk / TOR1 - Ubuntu 16.04.2 x64" was working fine until I've installed the page speed module for Apache: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-get-started-with-mod_pagespeed-with-apache-on-an-ubuntu-and-debian-cloud-server. I didn't install the Nginx module since my web server is apache.

I didn't change anything else, kept all the default settings, but since then, all the websites on the server crash every hour or so ... then when I restart Apache everything works for another hour. Am I missing something here? By crashing I mean, when I go to the website, it returns a 500 error.

I've installed Vesta CP on the server. What I find weird is that I can still access the cpanel when the other websites are down, which indicates that the server is not down itself but something that has to do with the virtual hosts.

Maybe one of you have had that problem before.

Thanks in advance.

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1 Answer
ryanpq MOD February 8, 2018

VestaCP like most web hosting control panels runs using a separate daemon from your main website in order to remain available even if the main web server goes down.

A 500 error is a script error. In this case it means that Apache's mod_php encountered an error when trying to process the requested URL. All 500 errors should output further details on the error encountered in the web server's log file (on nginx it's in the php-fpm log file instead) which can be found at /var/log/apache2/error.log by default on Ubuntu though this file could be elsewhere (in the site directory) when using VestaCP.

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