HTTP 500 Internal Server Error on WSS3 but ok

Question

People cannot access site http://server/sites/
but people still can access by using http://server/sites/default.aspx

Not all sites have problem,
some of that have problem.

I was upgrade from wss2. Not sure is the problem. becasue nobody discover the problem until recently.

Any ideas? Thanks

Answer 1

Sounds like you need to set the default welcome page for the site collection.  You should be able to go to site actions->site settings->welcome page and set it to default.aspx.

Answer 2

Thx, I think you are correct,

But i didtn;t find Welcome Page under Look and feel

Is it some feature require to enable before setting Welcome Page.
Thanks

Answer 3

You will not have Welcome Page under look and feel unless you have the Publsihing Feature turned on.  But sadly, it doesnt make a difference.  You will still get 500 Internal Server Error.

 

I know because I am having this same exact issue.  I finally learned exactly what causes it to happen.  It was directly caused by inheriting my permission levels from the parent site.

 

Ex. http://site/sub-site/broken-site. I inherited permission levels at http://site/sub-site.  Now any site under 'sub-site' I get the 500 Internal Server Error without going directly to the 'default.aspx' and the sites Permission Inheritence on the broken sites can no longer be broken from the parent.  You simply get a 'Cannot Complete this Action' Error.

 

After some wild guessing, a co-worker of mine did find a way to get the ability to break permission inheritence on the broken sub-site.  On the broken sub-site, you must first break the 'permission level' inheritence.  To do so, you have to know the URL.  So for our example broken sub-site, we would have to go to http://site/sub-site/broken-site/_layouts/role.aspx then select 'Edit Permission Levels'.

 

If anyone can shed any light or assistance on how to get the 500 Internal Server error resolved, I would greatly appreciate it. 

 

 

Answer 4

 

Update:

 

The 500 Internal Server error can also be resolved by re-inheriting the permission levels on the broken site after you have broken them.  So to reiterate the full steps for resolving both the permissions and 500 Internal Server error, are as follows:

From your broken sub-site, go to the '/_layouts/role.aspx' page, then select 'Edit Permission Levels'

Next, from the same page, click the 'Inherit Permission Levels' button. 

Your site should no longer display the 500 Internal Server error nor should you no longer be able to edit permissions.

 

Hope this helps someone else out there as it took myself and co-worker quite a long while to figure out what had happened and how to resolve.  Of course, any custom permssions on a library or list(or items within those) are completely gone.  But at least you can get to your site and at least re-do permissions.   

Answer 5

I experience the same issue, I break the permission inheritance through "/_layouts/role.aspx". So, in order to solve this 500 internal server default.aspx issue, I need to inherit back the permission. However, my subsite really needs to have unique permission, there're some groups that have different permission from the parent site. Any idea?

Answer 6

When I try and go to the http://server/broken-site/_layouts/role.aspx I am getting the "Cannot omplete this action. Please try again" message.

 

How do I change the permissions if I can't load the Roles.aspx page?

 

Thank you.

 

 

Answer 7

Thanks "Charftong," that did the trick for us.

Answer 8

We were unable to set unique permissions for 3 of our subsites, where all the others work fine. After replacing "_layouts/user.aspx" with "_layout/role.aspx" we were able to change this setting and change it back. After that setting the permissions works as it should.
My guess (after reading lots of log files) is that something (a document or setting) was missing and has been created by using this work-around.
Once the setting was in place we were able to change what we needed.

Many thanks to Charftong for sharing this knowledge.

Answer 9

We got this 500 - internal server error  problem other ways, but when we see that the subsite landing page won't load without manually adding the default.aspx, we break and re-establish permissions as enherited on the subsite and the error is fixed.