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Bug 716 - Weird, reproducible "500 internal server error"
Summary: Weird, reproducible "500 internal server error"
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Validator
Classification: Unclassified
Component: check (show other bugs)
Version: 0.6.5
Hardware: All other
: P1 major
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Olivier Thereaux
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-05-14 02:23 UTC by Ville Skyttä
Modified: 2006-03-12 00:44 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Ville Skyttä 2004-05-14 02:23:57 UTC
For some reason, the following message landed in my inbox (it was sent to
web-human@ and possibly bounced to me by Vivien).

This is a weird one, validating
http://lposun.larc.nasa.gov/ceresweb/INSTRUMENT/FM1_html/FM1_BRAKE_DEFINED_CAGED_MARGIN.html
 with the production v.w.o always gives me a "500 internal server error"
seemingly without anything useful showing up in the server's error log.

What makes it even stranger is that v.w.o:8001, qa-dev/wmvs/0.6 and my local
validator instance all are fine with this document, no "500 i s e".

----

Folks,

Attempts to validate the following URL is causing an "internal server error"
http://lposun.larc.nasa.gov/ceresweb/INSTRUMENT/FM1_html/FM1_BRAKE_DEFINED_CAGED_MARGIN.html
 File size: ~368_145 bytes

However, a virtually identical file (URL below) is not having any problems.
http://lposun.larc.nasa.gov/ceresweb/INSTRUMENT/FM4_html/FM4_BRAKE_DEFINED_CAGED_MARGIN.html
 File size: 170_636 bytes

Data of validation: 13 May, 2004
Time of validation: ~10:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time
                    ~14:30 GMT (?)

The formats of the files are identical as are the system permissions
and the top level directory structures.  The only noticeable difference
is the larger file size.  Otherwise I do not see any reason for
the server failure message.

Let me know how I can be of further assistance.  Otherwise, please
advise where/what are the problem(s).  The W3 validation service
is a very valuable tool in my web development endeavors.

Respectfully yours,

Phil Hess

-- 
Phillip C. Hess                        phone: 757.827.4850
SAIC,   One Enterprise Pkwy,           fax:   757.825.9129
Suite 300, Hampton, VA.  23666         email: p.c.hess@larc.nasa.gov
Comment 1 Terje Bless 2004-05-16 03:30:38 UTC
Reassigning to Olivier as I don't have the privileges to investigate issues on
v.w3.org:80.
Comment 2 Ville Skyttä 2004-05-16 07:00:17 UTC
Both :80 (where it doesn't work) and :8001 (where it does work) run an identical
version of the "check" script with the same httpd binary, so the only
differences between them are:
- Web server configuration.
- Frequency of hits.
Comment 3 Olivier Thereaux 2004-05-17 17:53:36 UTC
This is clearly an issue with the config (or load) of the apache server on
vwo:80, and not necessarily related to a specific version of the validator
(hence removing target)
Comment 4 Olivier Thereaux 2004-06-29 04:46:24 UTC
Ted found a fix a few weeks ago: raising ulimit.
closing issue.
Comment 5 Jay Goldman 2006-03-11 23:23:01 UTC
We've encountered a similarly weird reproducible 500 internal server error message. I'm not sure if they'll end up being the same problem, but they seemed related enough to report it in this bug rather than opening a new one.

We're attempting to validate a client site at http://www.malaprops.net. The validator consistently returns a 500 Internal Server Errror, but viewing the site from a variety of different browsers and operating systems is fine. We've combed through the Apache and Tomcat error logs and tailed them while reloading in the validator - we're not getting any error messages on our side at all. There isn't any further information in the validator error message that might help us track it down if it's not a bug, but maybe someone with acccess to the validator's logs might be able to help.

(We did, incidentally validate the source using the indespensible Web Developer's Toolbar in Firefox and the "Validate Local HTML" - it does validate).

Thanks!
Comment 6 Olivier Thereaux 2006-03-12 00:44:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #5)
> We've encountered a similarly weird reproducible 500 internal server error
> message.  
> We're attempting to validate a client site at http://www.malaprops.net. The
> validator consistently returns a 500 Internal Server Errror, but viewing the
> site from a variety of different browsers and operating systems is fine.

Your site somehow does not like the (simple and correct) requests made by the validator.

~% telnet www.malaprops.net 80
Trying 216.154.208.55...
Connected to malaprops.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.malaprops.net
User-Agent: W3C_Validator/0.7.2

HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:35:20 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.51 (Fedora)
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1

... 
javax.servlet.jsp.el.ELException: An exception occured trying to convert String "Sat Mar 11 19:35:30 EST 2006" to type "java.lang.Integer"
...
(just reproduce the query to get the full trace)

This is not the same problem as bug #716, but a problem on your side, I believe. 
I'll re-close this.