# Random 500 error

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986>\
**Category:** Radiant CMS\
**Created:** [October 1, 2007, 11:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986 "2007-10-01T11:58:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 11:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/1 "2007-10-01T11:58:56Z")

</div>

Hi,

I’m working from two month on a radiant based government site that has  
worked fine until two days ago.  
Now I get a random 500 internal server error when I try to edit/view  
pages in the admin interface and the error is transparent to the  
server logs.

At this point I’m very depressed because I can’t find the problem  
with the high probability to lost my work that now is on a testing  
server.

This is my server configuration:

windows 2003 server  
apache 1.3  
ruby 1.8.6  
rails 12.3  
mongrel 1.0.1  
mongrel\_service 0.3.2  
radiant jargon branch at revision 507  
reorder, page\_attachments, fckeditor and search extension.

Thanks,  
Mariano

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 1:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/2 "2007-10-01T13:00:26Z")

</div>

A few questions that may help:

```
 When you say "server logs", do you refer to both Apache and Rails

```

(production.log…)?

```
 What about the DB logs (MySQL, SQLServer...)?

 Does the 500 error come from Rails or from Apache?

 Can you connect to Radiant with script/console?

 Can you run Radiant with script/server without problems?

 /AITOR
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 2:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/3 "2007-10-01T14:43:52Z")

</div>

After a deepened analysis of rails production.log I think that the  
error is generated by the tinymcefilter extension that I’ve replaced  
recently with fckeditor.  
At this point how I can purge any reference to the TinyMceFilter  
extension?

A snippet of latest production.log file events :

Processing PageController#index (for 10.160.5.143 at 2007-10-01  
13:43:53) [GET]  
Session ID: 559ec14228a9c8d4e62a1f4cfd4614b0  
Parameters: {“action”=\>“index”, “controller”=\>“admin/page”}  
Rendering within layouts/application  
Rendering admin/page/index  
Completed in 0.56200 (1 reqs/sec) | Rendering: 0.36000 (64%) | DB:  
0.20200 (35%) | 200 OK [[http://10.160.16.48/admin/pages](http://10.160.16.48/admin/pages)]

Processing PageController#edit (for 10.160.5.143 at 2007-10-01 13:43:55)  
[GET]  
Session ID: 559ec14228a9c8d4e62a1f4cfd4614b0  
Parameters: {“action”=\>“edit”, “id”=\>“9”, “controller”=\>“admin/page”}  
Rendering within layouts/application  
Rendering admin/page/edit

ActionView::TemplateError  
(F:/web/portalstat/config/…/vendor/radiant/vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/…/…/activesupport/lib/active\_support/dependencies.rb:266:in  
`load\_missing\_constant’: uninitialized constant TinyMceFilter) on line  
#247 of vendor/extensions/fckeditor/app/views/admin/page/edit.rhtml:  
244:   
245:

  
246: 
### \<%= default\_filter\_name %\> Reference
  
247: 
\<%=  
filter\_reference(default\_filter\_name) %\>
  
248: 

\<%= link\_to\_function ‘Close’,  
“Element.hide(‘filter-reference-popup’)”, :class =\> ‘close-link’  
%\>

  
249: 
  
250: \<% end -%\>

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2007, 2:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/4 "2007-10-01T14:49:07Z")

</div>

It could be that some pages are still using TinyMceFilter, so if  
you remove it the will fail.

Try to just keep both installed until you are sure that you don’t  
“use” the old filter.

```
/AITOR
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 1:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/5 "2007-10-03T13:16:45Z")

</div>

On 10/1/07, Aitor Garay-Romero [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> It could be that some pages are still using TinyMceFilter, so if  
> you remove it the will fail.
> 
> Try to just keep both installed until you are sure that you don’t  
> “use” the old filter.

Thanks Aitor, I’ve cleaned the filter\_id column fields on the  
page\_parts table from the tinymce records and now all work fine.  
My consideration about the tinymce filter is that is very toxic, it  
can compromise your site because don’t have a rollback task,  
page\_attachments don’t work with it and the site of author is down.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 3:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/6 "2007-10-03T15:00:54Z")

</div>

With proper SCM techniques you avoid such problems. I even use sqlite3  
in development so i can version control the DB easily…

```
/AITOR
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 4:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/7 "2007-10-03T16:52:52Z")

</div>

Has anyone used SQLite3 for production deployment?

It seems that being able to move around the SQLite3 database file is  
a pretty big advantage, since you can download the production  
database and work locally on it. Any insight as to whether this would  
present any problems with a production site?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 5:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/8 "2007-10-03T17:00:29Z")

</div>

On Oct 3, 2007, at 10:51 , Ryan H. wrote:

> Has anyone used SQLite3 for production deployment?
> 
> It seems that being able to move around the SQLite3 database file is  
> a pretty big advantage, since you can download the production  
> database and work locally on it. Any insight as to whether this would  
> present any problems with a production site?

I tried it on one site and had to switch back to postgres - rake db  
tasks were failing with errors, and I cannot reproduce those errors  
on any other database platform I have access to.

I used to love sqlite3 for development, but ALTER statements don’t  
seem to work very well ☹

– Mitch

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mariano\_Viola](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Mariano_Viola)\
**Post date:** [October 3, 2007, 5:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/random-500-error/115986/9 "2007-10-03T17:05:11Z")

</div>

I’m using sqlite3 without problems. The only problem should be  
performance, MySQL, Postgre… are supposedly faster.

```
Just be careful with the typical rails/sqlite3 gotcha:

```

[http://wiki.radiantcms.org/FAQ](http://wiki.radiantcms.org/FAQ)

```
/AITOR

```