[mod_python] "Internal Server Error"

Wouter van Marle wrote ..
> On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 01:21 -0400, Graham Dumpleton wrote:
> > Wouter van Marle wrote ..
> > > Hi all,
> > > 
> > > Looking through my stats I see some of my users still get an "500
> > > internal server error". Is there any easy way to prevent this?
> > > 
> > > I've cut down on this already seriously by doing some POST checks (if
> > > the parameter does not exist, reroute to the section's home page instead
> > > of serving an empty page - which causes Apache to serve an "internal
> > > server error").
> > > 
> > > The current errors are usually from so malformed input I get a crash
> > > (I've to look into that, I know), or more frequently from mistypings
> in
> > > the URL (http://host/python/main.py/pagename). 
> > 
> > Is it definitely coming from mod_python code? Does it generate any sort
> > of Python stack trace in the Apache error log or any other message? If
> > using mod_python 3.2.8, pretty well all of the places in mod_python
> > which generate a 500 error should log a stack trace or some other
> > informative message as to why the 500 error was generated. Also, when
> > you say crash, do you mean the 500 error, or an actual Apache crash
> > due to a segmentation fault or something?
> 
> For example:
> 72.30.252.145 - - [25/Jun/2006:18:19:35 +0800] "GET /show_page.py/main
> HTTP/1.0" 500 538 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp;
> http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"
> 
> This is an invalid URL, but instead of a 404 it gives a 500 error. As
> it's asking for a .py file, it's passed on to the python interpreter. No
> info in the logs - neither from Python, neither from Apache that it's
> restarting.

Nothing in "error_log" file at all????

What handler are you using? Is this when using mod_python.publisher
or some custom handler? Is this with mod_python 3.2.8? In publisher
prior to 3.2.8, if the function returned None it would cause a 500 error
but not log anything, but current publisher would log a message in
the error log.

Graham