The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to.......

[billturner]

Hi,

Our website www.cellsavers.co.uk has all of a sudden developed a fault. It wont upload, nor download. I cant even do WEB / CONFIGURE

If a customer adds a product to basket, it shows:

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Is this a problem with the server or something wrong with actinic?

Any help would be really appreciated.

[leehack]

Have you tried a network test and have you done any of the normal housekeeping tasks?

[Duncan Rounding]

Being all of a sudden it is more likely to be something your host has done.

First run a network test and check for errors.

** - bit early for you Lee?!

[leehack]

Hmmm, it's a bit late actually lol.

[billturner]

Yep tried to do all of the usual tasks.
Can't even do a Test, when i do the following turns up:

Actinic received a server error from the web server. The CGI scripts are not executing properly on the server. Run Web | Configure Web Site Details... to review your web site configuration.

When i try and to Web / Configure that fails too

[pinbrook]

As Dunc says i'd look to the host having changed something first

[Mike Hughes]

The usual problem with hosts is when they 'upgrade' or 'recover' the system and this often leads to file permissions being returned to 644 by default.

The first thing I'd do is ftp into the site, check the acatalog and cgi-bin still exist and make sure the permissions are 777 and 755 respectively.

Mike

[billturner]

Mike, the permissions for acatalog are: 755

CGI-BIN is also 755.

Should i consider changing the acatalog permission.

Called the host, they say an error took place about midnight, not sure what, so waiting for a further update. Unfortunately this means no sales in the process.

I have also tried doing web / configure under a different hosting account and it does run as intended instead of failing, so this implies its not an actinic catalog issue.

[pinbrook]

acatalog needs to be 777 - Group / Public need write permission

[billturner]

Thanks all for the replies and suggestions.

It is all working now. Phew!

[Mike Hughes]

Was it something the host did or something else?

It helps to know so people with a similar problem in the future have some ideas of where to start looking?

Mike

[billturner]

Hi Mike,

I'm happy to give an update. This forum has been a source of assistance and advice for me.

The exact reply from the hosts was:

The problem was a low level setting within the hardware itself that defines how many files Apache (the web server) can have open. Its odd that this only seems to affect cgi-bin based applications as if its not set at a high enough value then the entire web server should fail.

They subsequently increased the value.

Thanks again ALL for the help and assistance.