1and1 cgi problems - 500 internal error on all cgi calls

[Mike Hughes]

I thought I'd better post an update that a better perl hello world script does run OK.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello World\n";

So it's not everything to do with perl that's broken.

Mike

[guccij]

We're down as well. Looks like they changed something at midnight - ish. Madly cross now.

[leehack]

I'm guessing that there has been a Perl upgrade.

[guccij]

I'm getting the "all our advisors are busy message" then buzzing. Crap.

[Duncan Rounding]

All our 1and1 hosted sites are affected as well with fhe same issue.

[saucysal]

Got a reply!

OK. So I waited through the silence and eventually somebody spoke! Amazing! She said that there was a known problem and that they were fixing it as quickly as possible and that it should be working again in a few hours. Uh! This is our whole business! We have had some telephone calls from customers: some get very cross, even though I am as polite and helpful as possible, and say they will go elsewhere and that we have lost a customer, others let me take their name and number so that I can ring them back as soon as it is working, though I guess some will give up waiting and go "elsewhere". There is one "elsewhere" and they are not hosted by 1&1. So were are certainly losing business, and we have 7 full-time employees here with nothing to do at present.
Sarah

[saucysal]

Jules - you need to hold on

After they tell you that you are on a queue, there is silence, but you are on the queue, you just have to wait . . . and wait.

However, it looks like they now realise that they have a problem and are trying to fix it.

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

It's probably too late to make much difference now but I wonder if we should replace the standard 'error 500' message with one that has our phone number and maybe a 'mailto' on it.

This would give customers some way of contacting us to let us know about the problem and/or place the order over the phone and/or leave some contact details so we can let them know when it's fixed.

Mike

[leehack]

Seems like a good idea Mike, even if it only helps for an hour or so now, it will be there in the future.

[Donna Kempster]

Sounds like a good idea .... for the less able of us could you give a quick post how to do it??

D x

[Paul Bulpit]

We just put a message up in the header explaining that it's not just us, and suspended ordering.

We've kept one tiny site live so we can see when it's working again.

[jayzy1]

Yes down here as well with 1&1, have raised a support ticket.

and agreed, simple instructions on how to replace the standard 'error 500' message would be very useful.

Thanks

[saucysal]

Just put up message on our homepage

I have put a message on our homepage about the problem and inviting customers to ring us with their contact details so that we can let them know when it is fixed. Unfortunately not many people seem to go on our site via the homepage. All our Google Adwords take them directly to specific product pages.

Sarah

[guccij]

Just got through, useless. "Within the hour". Yeah, right. No apology of course. 1and1 - you suck.

[Mike Hughes]

It's the same as the 404 error page explained here http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=33443 ( see Duncans note about where to put the error pages with 1and1) but using

ErrorDocument 500 /Internal_Server_Error.html

instead / as well as

ErrorDocument 404 /Page_Not_Found.html

in your htaccess file.

These lines tell the server which filename / webpage to display for the error. You can call the page anything you want.

Mike