500 Internal Server Error

[Debi Silber]

I'm getting a 500 Internal server error. We've been running it on a subfolder of our website. (https://mypbtinstitute.com/community) MyPBTInstitute.com is hosted on WPEngine.com. We've been running it there for nearly 4 years. The community has run fantastically up until this morning. Now we're getting the 500 Internal server error. The rest of our website works fine. It's a WordPress site. We're using the last version that can run on php 7.4. I've tried multiple times to update to newer and obviously update to php 8, but I've been unsuccessful. Now this happened. We've not made any changes since last night when it was running fine. I tried to restore backup to yesterday morning, but that didn't help. I realize 500 is a very generic code. I've been working on this all day and I'm at a loss. WPEngine says they don't know what's wrong and won't support us because it's not WordPress software. What can we do? We have several hundred members who rely on the site daily.  

[teraßyte]

A 500 Error is too generic. You need to look at the server/PHP error log to figure out what the real error behind it is. Once you find it, we can go from there.

 

EDIT

Actually, I just tried to open your site and I'm getting a slightly different error compared to your screenshot. There's an additional Permission denied row. It might be related to MySQL. 🤔

You'll still need to look up the real error, though.

[Debi Silber]

I'm running on WPEngine servers. I got the server/PHP error log, but don't know what I'm looking for. There are a TON of logs for the past 24 hrs. Suggestions?

[teraßyte]

Refresh your site's homepage and then check again the logs. It should be the latest log available.

If unsure, try posting a few different errors and we can try to figure it out.

This is an example of what it should look like from another topic:

 

It won't be the same exact error, but you can at least see how it should look.

[Debi Silber]

Here are the last couple on the log. The last one seems to have been created just now as I tried to access the community. Is this what you're meaning?

[Thu Jan 11 00:33:24.564725 2024] [php7:notice] [pid 29586] [client 166.198.116.178:0] auditor:event=wp_login {"user_id":75,"blog_id":1,"event":"wp_login","current_user_id":75,"remote_addr":"166.198.116.178"}, referer: https://mypbtinstitute.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmypbtinstitute.com%2Fcommunity%2Findex.php%3F%2Fforum%2F12-the-pbt%C2%AE-cafe%2F [Thu Jan 11 01:40:24.236634 2024] [php7:notice] [pid 2950] [client 162.211.155.197:0] auditor:event=wp_login {"user_id":3,"blog_id":1,"event":"wp_login","current_user_id":0,"remote_addr":"162.211.155.197"}, referer: https://mypbtinstitute.com/

[Debi Silber]

Here's another:

[Thu Jan 11 01:48:43.941965 2024] [php7:notice] [pid 16348] [client 162.211.155.197:0] auditor:event=wp_login {"user_id":3,"blog_id":1,"event":"wp_login","current_user_id":3,"remote_addr":"162.211.155.197"}, referer: https://mypbtinstitute.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmypbtinstitute.com%2Fcommunity%2Findex.php%3F%2Fforum%2F12-the-pbt%C2%AE-cafe%2F

[teraßyte]

That seems to be the access log rather than the error log, and both links are for WP's login page.

[Debi Silber]

So we use WordPress SSO 1.2.3 by Stuart Silverster. We log into the WordPress site, then the plugin logs us into the community. It works great, but we don't have a way to log in directly. That may be why we're getting the log in issue. WPEngine logs it as an error. 

Here's one that's different:  

[Thu Jan 11 00:29:05.523238 2024] [php7:error] [pid 31767] [client 162.211.155.197:0] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught IPS\\Db\\Exception: Permission denied in /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Db/Db.php:269\nStack trace:\n#0 /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Db/Db.php(356): IPS\\_Db->_establishConnection(false)\n#1 /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Db/Db.php(487): IPS\\_Db->checkConnection(false)\n#2 /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Db/Db.php(972): IPS\\_Db->preparedQuery('REPLACE INTO `c...', Array)\n#3 /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Session/Admin.php(112): IPS\\_Db->replace('core_sys_cp_ses...', Array)\n#4 [internal function]: IPS\\Session\\_Admin->write('e8c0b8c0ef60ba4...', '')\n#5 [internal function]: session_write_close()\n#6 {main}\n  thrown in /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Db/Db.php on line 269

[teraßyte]

Yes, that's the one. Just like I said in in my previous reply, you have a permission denied error when trying to connect to the database:

PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught IPS\\Db\\Exception: Permission denied in /nas/content/live/mypbtinstitute/community/system/Db/Db.php

 

This is something that your hosting needs to check. The software is being denied access to the MySQL database. Something must have broken/changed on their side if you didn't make any changes.

[Debi Silber]

UGH! WPEngine is giving me the runaround saying they don't support it because it's not WP-specific. Yet for nearly 4 years, we haven't had any issues until today. Any suggestions on how to approach them about it? I asked them if there had been any updates on their side and they didn't answer me. They are really losing credibility with me on this.

[teraßyte]

Well, the issue is that you can't connect to MySQL with the account/credentials you've used so far.

It's not a question of supporting non-WP-specific software or not, the MySQL account simply isn't working. 🤷‍♂️

 

You could upload a simple PHP script that tries to connect to MySQL with the same account to prove your point I guess. Here's an example code:

<?php
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$database = "database";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $database);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

echo "Connected successfully";

// Close connection
$conn->close();

 

If they still won't help, it's probably time to change hosting... 🙄

Edited January 11 by teraßyte

[Debi Silber]

Thank you for your help. I'll contact them again and see if I can get anywhere with them.