Global Moxie

Question

Why do I get a “500: Internal Server Error” or “Premature End of Script Headers” message when I connect to Big Medium?

Answer

This is a generic message that tells us only that the web server had trouble running the requested script. There are a wide variety of possible reasons for this message, but this checklist addresses the most common:

Upload moxiebin files as plain text

When uploading the files to your server’s moxiebin directory, be sure that your FTP client program is set to “ASCII” or “plain text” mode. Do not use an “automatic” or “auto-detect” mode for the moxiebin files.

Unix-based servers: Check file permissions

Make sure that the moxiebin directory has permission set to chmod 0755. Likewise, make sure that all of the files in the moxiebin directory whose names end with “.cgi” are set to chmod 0755.

Check the Perl path

For Unix-based servers (and Windows servers running Apache instead of IIS), make sure that the path to Perl is correct on the first line of the files ending with “.cgi” in the moxiebin directory.

If you’re not sure what the Perl path should be, check with your hosting company or server administrator.

For example, if your Unix-based Perl path is /usr/bin/perl, then the first line of all .cgi files should be:
#!/usr/bin/perl -Tw

If your Windows Perl path is C:\perl\bin\perl.exe then the first line of all of the .cgi files should be:
#!C:\perl\bin\perl.exe -w

Windows servers: Configure .cgi to run Perl

If you’re running Big Medium on a Windows IIS server, the server may not yet be configured to run .cgi scripts. Set up a .cgi mapping for the server.

Still got the problem?

If you continue to get the error after making this change, please consult your server’s error logs to gather more information about the cause of the error. If you don’t have access to your error logs, ask your hosting provider if they can look up the information for you. Once you have the info in hand, contact me with the information that you’ve uncovered.