Thread

I have an Expression Engine install that has suddenly, and for no apparent reason, starting giving 500 errors when trying to access the System panel.

The frontend of the site works fine, but attempting to log into the System backend fails.

The login page displays properly, and correctly warns for a bad password, but once good credentials are entered it fails to load and errors out.

It was working fine 24 hours previously, and since then I’ve changed nothing on the server.

I’m the process of getting the server logs, but any advice on what might be causing this trouble would be appreciated.

Okay, my bug just got a lot stranger. I found that if I submit correct login information, I’ll get the 500 error. If I then hit the back button to the login page, and submit again with just a username and a blank password, I’m redirected to the control panel, which displays the login form and a warning that the password is incorrect, but also has all the normal navigation tabs.

At this point I can navigate freely and do everything I normally would.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

I’ve traced this down to the following issue:

For some reason attempting to view the CP Home throws a 500 error.
Since this is where a successful login goes, this is why the login seemed to fail.

Does anyone know why the CP Home would error like this?

I’ve chased down the culprit:

The Ellis Lab News Feed

For some reason, when this is turned on for the home page, it gives a 500 error.

When I turn it off, the error disappears. I’m not sure what about the news feed is causing this, but that’s the problem.

Can you check with your host if anthing has in fact changed on your server on the last 24hrs? Something that you may have been unaware of.

The host insists that nothing on the server has changed. That was my first guess, but they’ve continued to insist that nothing was altered.

Rob,

what happens when you go to the Plugin Manager page?

Admin ›  Utilities ›  Plugin Manager

Can you see the latest list of plugins in the right hand column?

Not much happens.

And yes, I do see the list of plugins on the right.

Rob,

can you create a new blank template, include the following code and come back to us with the results.

{exp:magpie url="http://expressionengine.com/feeds/rss/full/" limit="10" refresh="720"}
<ul>
{items}
<li><a href="http://{link}">{title}</a></li>
{/items}
</ul>
{/exp:magpie}

That produces a 500 error. Same as the CP Home with the news feed on.

Can you try again to get your server logs from your host while at the same time asking if they changed anything specifically relating to outgoing connections?

I’ve just moved a clients site to a new server yesterday and got exactly the same problem.

Using your magpie test above it told me it was having trouble writing to the system/cache/magpie etc. directory, I enabled relevant permissions on the cache directory and now everything is happy.

:: ed

So the root cause was the permissions level in the magpie directory, and once fixing that problem, everything is OK?

For me at least, yes. Re-reading the above, I didn’t get a 500 error once I created the magpie template, but got the directory permissions error instead.

Rob, how about you?