WTF is the "500 Internal Server Error"?

My (soon to be former) webhost decided to upgrade servers and control panels a few weeks ago (incidentally about the same time the SDMB went down :(), which all but totally hosed my web site. I got most of the stuff back from my backup, but my CGI scripts are DOA.

Take for instance my date script . Other than minor configuration settings, all I really needed to do was provide the route to perl on the server, which I did. Yet the 500 error.

Is the 500 an error on my part, or is my (really soon to be former) webhost really sucky enough to have misconfigured a server?

And on a side note, does anybody know how to backup/reload a mySQL database? My boards would thank you. :frowning:

Okay, did some research and checked out possible problems.

Yes, I did upload the script in ASCII mode. Yes the path to Perl is correct. Yes, the program is chmoded correctly (tried 705, 755, and 777 with no success).

I’m just starting to learn Web programming, using Java beans, and am also wrestling with this most dreaded of errors. Some of my beans work, and some don’t, and I don’t know why. So I’m definitely not an authority, but FWIW I did recently have such an error, and was able to prevent it by initializing a String object in the bean to a nonblank value. I have no idea why that made this particular bean work.

Woosh! :slight_smile:

Oh boogers. Mods, I meant to post this in GQ. Could somebody move it for me?

Unless, of course, I did post it in GQ and it was moved here. In which case, um, never mind.