lighttpd forum lighty > Fastcgi 500 errors [Lighty 1.4.18, PHP 5.2.5]

Hi all.

I'm experiencing the 500 error some users have come across when using 
PHP5 with fastcgi.

This is occuring our live server (CentOS), which is running lighty 
1.4.18 and php 5.2.5 (both compiled from source). We also have a 
development server running lighty 1.4.15 and 5.2.1 (compiled with the 
same parameters as the live server) which does not experience this 
problem at all. Both servers are configured the same.

My error log from lighttpd shows the following:

2008-01-02 06:28:01: (mod_fastcgi.c.2462) unexpected end-of-file 
(perhaps the fastcgi process died): pid: 9264 socket: 
unix:/tmp/php.socket9261-0
2008-01-02 06:28:01: (mod_fastcgi.c.3254) response not received, request 
sent: 1058 on socket: unix:/tmp/php.socket9261-0 for /view , closing 
connection

PHP is set to log errors to a file, which remains empty other than one 
or two notices which occur due to the application I'm running.

I've tried all the fixes from the other forums, but with no luck.

I've tried turning xcache off, changing the number of php processes, 
etc. Nothing has helped.

The only thing I can find that narrows it down is that it might be due 
to sessions in PHP. I tried switching our live server to memcache'd 
sessions, which caused the 500 error to occur more frequently and always 
threw a 500 when trying to clear the session. However, the same code 
works fine on our dev server.

Any thoughts?

I had the same error on my site. All the fixes or workarounds I came 
across didnt work for me either. Luckily I was only displaying static 
info on the site so my workaround was to create a custom 500 error page. 
This can be set in lighty's config file. The custom error html page uses 
meta tags to wait 5 seconds before refreshing the page. By that stage 
the fastcgi backend was back up.

This is a pretty ugly and brute force hack but it works for me. 
Obviously if you are dealing with dynamic data on the site, then a more 
involved workaround is needed.

I'm having the same issue, and am certain this is a PHP issue, not 
Lighty. After starting the server, I get panic messages from the PHP 
process itself.

There's some sort of weirdness with the libc library on CentOS 5 and PHP 
5.2.5. I have not tried using 5.2.0, but plan to.

After running with 5.2.0 overnight, I saw no issues.
I suggest staying away from 5.2.5, it's definitely the problem.

Jason Young wrote:
> After running with 5.2.0 overnight, I saw no issues.
> I suggest staying away from 5.2.5, it's definitely the problem.

Running a year old PHP version is not cool :P If there is indeed an 
issue with 5.2.5 there must be a fix out there.

Jason Young wrote:
> After running with 5.2.0 overnight, I saw no issues.
> I suggest staying away from 5.2.5, it's definitely the problem.

What about 5.2.4 then?

Olaf van der Spek wrote:
> Jason Young wrote:
>> After running with 5.2.0 overnight, I saw no issues.
>> I suggest staying away from 5.2.5, it's definitely the problem.
> 
> What about 5.2.4 then?

According to this it works in 5.2.4 but I have not confirmed it. Has 
anyone tried?
http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43476

Also they say that is was fixed in a snapshot, can anyone confirm this?

Kaah wrote:
> Olaf van der Spek wrote:
>> Jason Young wrote:
>>> After running with 5.2.0 overnight, I saw no issues.
>>> I suggest staying away from 5.2.5, it's definitely the problem.
>> 
>> What about 5.2.4 then?
> 
> According to this it works in 5.2.4 but I have not confirmed it. Has 
> anyone tried?
> http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43476
> 
> Also they say that is was fixed in a snapshot, can anyone confirm this?

There is this patch but it did not solve it for us.
http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php-src/main/SAPI.c?r1=1.202.2.7.2.15&r2=1.202.2.7.2.16&pathrev=PHP_5_2&diff_format=u

Kaah wrote:
> Kaah wrote:
>> Olaf van der Spek wrote:
>>> Jason Young wrote:
>>>> After running with 5.2.0 overnight, I saw no issues.
>>>> I suggest staying away from 5.2.5, it's definitely the problem.
>>> 
>>> What about 5.2.4 then?
>> 
>> According to this it works in 5.2.4 but I have not confirmed it. Has 
>> anyone tried?
>> http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43476
>> 
>> Also they say that is was fixed in a snapshot, can anyone confirm this?
> 
> There is this patch but it did not solve it for us.
> http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php-src/main/SAPI.c?r1=1.202.2.7.2.15&r2=1.202.2.7.2.16&pathrev=PHP_5_2&diff_format=u

We are going to try out 5.2.0 and see how it goes. If it works stable 
24h we will upgrade to 5.2.1 and so on until it breaks :P