500 internal server error at back end - Joomla

Question

I have installed new site in Joomla 1.7 and its working fine, but when i checked its back-end (administrator) got 500 Internal Server Error.

Note: Site is working fine in Local server.

Please suggestion me any solution.

Thanks in advance.

Paramilitary

Did the logfiles show anything? – Cockboat

thankx for the reply.... and log is not showing anything :( – Paramilitary

The apache error.log (if you are using apache) should show at least something. – Cockboat

Can you add a little more info? How did you place the files on the server initially - unzip locally and ftp individual files to server, install locally an transfer with akeeba backup .jpa file(s) or manually unzipping on the remote server? Is the error as soon as you go to /administrator/, as soon as you successfully login, or when you go to one specific page within the admin area? Depending upon your server's setup you may need the apache error log, or perhaps suexec's error log file. – Blackcap

Have you tried a different browser? I know this sounds like madness but I've just been helping someone on the Joomla forums and one particular browser produces a server 500 error whilst another doesn't. The upshot is that the 'server error' may not be a true server error but something triggered due to a cookie or some other external factor. – Blackcap

Answer 1

First you have change folder permission to 775 for the following folders:

cache, logs, tmp & administrator/cache

then go to: configuration.php

find code:

$log_path = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX';
$tmp_path = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXX';

and change code into:

$log_path = './logs';
$tmp_path = './tmp';

problem solved :)

Printing

Thanks a thousand times. I searched the wole internet. I have a pretty big project I working on, and the jomsocial component didn't wanted to work. With this trick it worked. Thanks !! – Hales

JomSocial user here as well, and the solution worked for my client's site! Thank you :) – Autocrat

Thanks a lot, you saved all my work. Especially the part with the $log_path and $tmp_path are very important. – Nihility

its safe to delete content of those folders? – Movie

As far as i know, the cache content can be regenerated at any time and the temporary files are there temporarily, used by plugins and others modules so yes should be safe – Lilylilyan

Answer 2

I had this problem, but none of your advices didn't help.
I fixed a problem only after I switched off all modules via PhpMyAdmin (PMA).

Table modules, changed parameter "published" to 0 for all and then enabled only few modules with these types:

• mod_login
• mod_menu
• mod_sumbenu
• mod_toolbar
• mod_title

After this I entered admin page and used top menu to enable all needed modules one by one. After admin page started to give me 500 error again I knew what module is faulty and I disabled it again via PMA.

Hearth

Answer 3

May be some files are not uploded.Check failed transfer of your FTP server.Make sure all the files are uploded online

Epencephalon

Don't know who gave you the down vote - but I've upvoted you because frankly this is always a good debugging step with a site transferred from one host to another (if done via ftp). Error log analysis would be best - but often they aren't easily accessible from shared hosting or people don't know where to find them. – Blackcap

thank you for up vote , i posted the answer because it has happened with me in the past so i thought that can be one of the case – Epencephalon

Answer 4

Check your error logs and backtrace what is causing the error. It sounds like you have MySQL errors, make sure any of your components/modules/aren't tricking out your site.

Think it's a component?

You can login into PHPMyAdmin and disable/enable modules manually by unpublishing them using the table editor, changing isPublished to 0 .

Jaworski

Answer 5

Try reinstalling database with the correct compatibility and also check web.config file on ftp for correct configuration paths !

Viddah

Answer 6

I experienced something similar on my site. Digging through the log file, /administrator/error_log i saw this error message:

[08-Oct-2012 15:28:59] PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function login() on a non-object in /home/XXX/public_html/administrator/components/com_login/admin.login.php on line 65 .

Problem was, i had a previous installation of Joomla 1.5.x, and uploaded files for Joomla 1.6 to replace the previous files and upgrade security of the site. Took me almost a month to find a solution for my own case;

Finally found out from this website that I needed to completely delete all previous files in the website root directory before uploading a new version of Joomla.

Hope this helps someone out there who is in the same situation!

Height

Answer 7

I also have the same issue on my site backend when editing or saving some articles, modules etc...Finally i solved it... Add these lines to /etc/httpd/conf.d/mod_secuirity.conf on your server

SecRuleEngine Off

save it...and restart apache...it works fine for me. Adding these lines disable mod_secuirity engine off.I don't know if it causes secuirity problems in future.. Tnx all...

Planish

Answer 8

Change the permission of folder administrator at 775 or 755

Adamantine

Answer 9

I tried all the above ideas. Without avail. For my site (which was an outdated Joomla 1.5.x site- don't ask!!!), where the backend suddenly stopped working, the final solution was switching the servers PHP version from 4 to 5.5 (even 5.4 did not work!).

I then got some strange PHP warnings in the frontend. But I then updated Joomla from the now again working backend to the last 1.5 version and everything worked fine from the on.

Phew! Maybe this helps someone later on...

Camala

Answer 10

In my case there was a single file with bad permissions.

It can be tricky to figure out which file has the problem so just run this to set the permissions for all the files in the directory:

chmod -R ug+rwX .
chmod -R o+rX .

Macdonald

Answer 11

Change the permissions of all of your files/directories.

• Files should be 755
• Directories should be 644

Dammar

Answer 12

This is my case and my solution:

I have changed my server and got this error. I have protected my administrator folder using password protection method. So I have checked my new server and found that my protection information are not saved in control panel. also my .htaccess file (in administrator folder) is not compatible to my new server.

The solution:

1. Simply protect my folder using control panel
2. I have renamed the .htaccess file to htaccess.txt

It is done.

I hope it could be useful ;)

Lunate