# Apache2 with dispatch.fcgi randomly gives Internal Server Error for RoR 1.2.3 application

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache2-with-dispatch-fcgi-randomly-gives-internal-server-error-for-ror-1-2-3-application/117747>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 19, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache2-with-dispatch-fcgi-randomly-gives-internal-server-error-for-ror-1-2-3-application/117747 "2007-10-19T21:27:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![James\_SMikeSS\_Conle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@James\_SMikeSS\_Conle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/James_SMikeSS_Conle)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2007, 9:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/apache2-with-dispatch-fcgi-randomly-gives-internal-server-error-for-ror-1-2-3-application/117747/1 "2007-10-19T21:27:05Z")

</div>

I’m working on a Ruby on Rails application that is hosted in an  
environment that supports Apache2 calling dispatch.fcgi. The weird  
part is that it works about 99.5% of the time but on rare seemingly  
random occasions I get internal server errors. This happens in both  
development and production. There is nothing added in production or  
development logs when this happens.

The Apache error log has a few hopefully minor issues:  
[Thu Oct 18 10:49:32 2007] [error] [client NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN] FastCGI:  
server “/var/www/sites/myapp/cgi/public/dispatch.fcgi” stderr:  
DEPRECATION WARNING: You called render(‘shared/list’), which is a  
deprecated API call. Instead you use render :file =\> shared/list.  
Calling render with just a string will be removed from Rails 2.0. See  
[Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.](http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation) for details. (called from  
render\_without\_benchmark at  
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action\_controller/layout.rb:247),  
referer: [https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list](https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list)

[Thu Oct 18 10:49:32 2007] [error] [client NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN] FastCGI:  
server “/var/www/sites/myapp/cgi/public/dispatch.fcgi” stderr:  
DEPRECATION WARNING: @params is deprecated! Call params.merge instead  
of @params.merge. Args: [{:sort\_order=\>{“1”=\>“ASC”},  
:sort\_association=\>{“1”=\>“foobar”}, :sort\_priority=\>{“1”=\>“1”},  
:sort\_key=\>{“1”=\>“id”}}] See [Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.](http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation)  
for details. (called from sort\_link at  
…/config/…/app/helpers/sort\_helper.rb:182), referer:  
[https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list](https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list)  
[Note: this one is weird since I am using params.merge and not  
@params.merge]

[Thu Oct 18 10:49:33 2007] [error] [client NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN] FastCGI:  
server “/var/www/sites/myapp/cgi/public/dispatch.fcgi” stderr:  
DEPRECATION WARNING: You’ve called image\_path with a source that  
doesn’t include an extension. In Rails 2.0, that will not result in  
.png automatically being appended. So you should call  
image\_path(‘/images/downarrow.png’) instead See  
[Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.](http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation) for details. (called from  
image\_tag at  
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-1.13.3/lib/action\_view/helpers/asset\_tag\_helper.rb:188),  
referer: [https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list](https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list)  
[Note: this seems weird since I’d expect actionpack to be fairly hip  
to deprecations]

[Thu Oct 18 10:49:33 2007] [error] [client NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN] FastCGI:  
server “/var/www/sites/myapp/cgi/public/dispatch.fcgi” stderr:  
DEPRECATION WARNING: start\_form\_tag is deprecated and will be removed  
from Rails 2.0 (use form\_tag instead) See  
[Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.](http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation) for details. (called from  
\_run\_rhtml\_47app47views47shared47\_contenthead46rhtml at  
…/config/…/app/views/shared/\_contenthead.rhtml:10), referer:  
[https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list](https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list)

[Thu Oct 18 10:49:33 2007] [error] [client NNN.NNN.NNN.NNN] FastCGI:  
server “/var/www/sites/myapp/cgi/public/dispatch.fcgi” stderr:  
DEPRECATION WARNING: end\_form\_tag is deprecated and will be removed  
from Rails 2.0 See [Ruby on Rails — A web-app framework that includes everything needed to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.](http://www.rubyonrails.org/deprecation) for  
details. (called from  
\_run\_rhtml\_47app47views47shared47\_contentfoot46rhtml at  
…/config/…/app/views/shared/\_contentfoot.rhtml:47), referer:  
[https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list](https://myapp.domain.com/foobar/list)  
[Note: the last two are legit but I wouldn’t think fatal]

in the fastcgi.crash.log I do see a number of:  
[18/Oct/2007:14:32:44 :: 13033] starting  
[18/Oct/2007:14:35:09 :: 13033] asked to terminate immediately  
[18/Oct/2007:14:35:09 :: 13033] terminated by explicit exit  
that roughly correspond to the times of the failures.

Ruby is:  
$ ruby --version  
ruby 1.8.4 (2005-12-24) [i486-linux]

My gem list is:  
$ gem list

\*\*\* LOCAL GEMS \*\*\*

actionmailer (1.3.3)  
Service layer for easy email delivery and testing.

actionpack (1.13.3)  
Web-flow and rendering framework putting the VC in MVC.

actionwebservice (1.2.3)  
Web service support for Action Pack.

activerecord (1.15.3)  
Implements the ActiveRecord pattern for ORM.

activeresource (0.9.0)  
Think Active Record for web resources.

activesupport (1.4.2)  
Support and utility classes used by the Rails framework.

cgi\_multipart\_eof\_fix (2.1)  
Fix an exploitable bug in CGI multipart parsing which affects Ruby  
\<= 1.8.5 when multipart boundary attribute contains a non-halting  
regular expression string.

daemons (1.0.5)  
A toolkit to create and control daemons in different ways

fastthread (0.6.4.1)  
Optimized replacement for thread.rb primitives

flexmock (0.5.0)  
Simple and Flexible Mock Objects for Testing

gem\_plugin (0.2.2)  
A plugin system based only on rubygems that uses dependencies only

mocha (0.3.2)  
Mocking and stubbing library

mongrel (1.0.1)  
A small fast HTTP library and server that runs Rails, Camping, Nitro  
and Iowa apps.

rails (1.2.3)  
Web-application framework with template engine, control-flow layer,  
and ORM.

rake (0.7.2)  
Ruby based make-like utility.

sources (0.0.1)  
This package provides download sources for remote gem installation

tzinfo (0.3.3)  
Daylight-savings aware timezone library

I’d definitely appreciate any clues as to what’s up and how to fix it.