Fix error 500

Hello there,

This 500 error is most commonly thrown by php. A change can be made in the file php.ini. We have seen this happen before and it typically occurs when display_errors is set to Off. You can try going in and turning the setting on, to see if it resolves the issue.

You can run the following command to confirm that this setting is set to Off:

php -i | grep display_errors

If it is set to Off, then we will want to change it to On.

Use the following command to locate the php.ini file:

php -i | grep php.ini

Once you locate the php.ini file, you want edit it with which ever text editor you choose. For this example, we will use nano.

sudo nano /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini

Search for the line display_errors = Off and change it to On.

After this change has been made, you will want to restart the web server so they can take effect.

If you are running nginx:
service nginx restart

If you are running apache:
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If you find that this configuration was not the cause of this 500 error, it may be worth looking into your system log files. Below I have provided a link to another post on our community site that describes which logs you should check and how to check them.

I hope this helps.

Mike
Linode Support

Thank you! I enabled PHP errors and found a dependency error that was causing the problem.