"Malfomed Header" causes 500 error

[Orono1]

I'm pretty sure the answer to this is already on the forums somewhere, but since I can't seem to find it, I'll start a new topic. When a customer tries to register as a new user or go to the "finished" page in the order process, they get a page with this error msg (all brackets in this post have been added by me):

 

<i>Internal Server Error

 

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

 

Please contact the server administrator, [my email] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

 

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Apache/2.0.46 (Red Hat) Server at www.gearforhealth.com Port 443</i>

 

This also happens when I try to send any emails from the admin area. As far as the orders and registration goes, the information is still getting processed (not that the customer can tell, with that error message). But no one is getting emails.

 

I've got the transport method set to "sendmail" and the linefeed set to "LF", though I've tried the other combinations. Send email is set to "true".

 

I recently bought a SSL certificate from the company that runs our server, but the configure.php settings look good, and are as follows:

 

<i>define('HTTP_SERVER', 'http://www.gearforhealth.com'); // eg, http://localhost - should not be empty for productive servers

define('HTTP_CATALOG_SERVER', 'http://www.gearforhealth.com');

define('HTTPS_CATALOG_SERVER', 'https://www.gearforhealth.com');

define('ENABLE_SSL_CATALOG', 'true'); // secure webserver for catalog module</i>

 

The error log in /var/log/httpd shows roughly the same message for every time the error occured. The IP and the referring URL are the only differences:

 

<i>[error] [client 64.90.77.150] malformed header from script. Bad header=/home/[admin's username]/dead.letter... : php-script, referer: https://www.gearforhealth.com/oscommerce/ch...n.php</i>

 

Dead.letter is where it should be, and looks to be a text copy of all the emails I've supposedly sent. Deleting dead.letter from the server didn't solve the problem; I've since returned it.

 

As far as I can tell, my server has given me access to all the files (except the root folder). I don't know anything about Apache or Perl or Linux, but the .htgroup file is empty, and the .htaccess file in var/www/html only has the single line of code I put in to send people directly to /oscommerce when they type in www.gearforhealth.com.

 

The access.conf file in etc/security seems to contain nothing but comments, followed by this stuff at the end, which just looks like more comments to me:

 

<i>

################################

# Disallow console logins to all but a few accounts.

#

#-:ALL EXCEPT wheel shutdown sync:LOCAL

#

# Disallow non-local logins to privileged accounts (group wheel).

#

#-:wheel:ALL EXCEPT LOCAL .win.tue.nl

#

# Some accounts are not allowed to login from anywhere:

#

#-:wsbscaro wsbsecr wsbspac wsbsym wscosor wstaiwde:ALL

#

# All other accounts are allowed to login from anywhere.

#

</i>

 

And that's all the information I can think to give. I'm not quite sure where the problem is coming from. Does anyone know what should I change, and what should I change it to?

[veriomigration]

I'm having the exact same problem...

 

What was the solution?

 

Bill

[Orono1]

Never found one. I'm thinking it might be a server issue (I have a Sevaa account), that I don't have the proper permissions to send mail, for whatever reason. But I haven't tried that yet.

[♥Vger]

Well, I just finished your registration process without problems (you can delete that fake signup now). I also sent a test form to mail from your contact us page, and that seems to have gone through ok.

 

Vger

[Orono1]

For those of you still wondering about the problem, I never solved it. As Vger points out, I got rid of the appearence of a problem by disabling all notification emails and manually sending out confirmation emails to customers.

 

I'm told that the next webmaster fixed the problem for good. If that's true, I'm sorry to say I don't know how she did it. The problem was certainly beyond my ken. Good luck to the rest of you.

 

Well, I just finished your registration process without problems (you can delete that fake signup now). I also sent a test form to mail from your contact us page, and that seems to have gone through ok.

 

Vger

[mrzystem]

This error occurs on many servers when the php mail() function is used and the To: address is an non-existing address or when the To: address cannot be found due to name server problems.

 

The solution that my hosting provider gave me was this: (hope it works for everyone)

 

- put "[email protected]" as a parameter in the mail() command.

 

where [email protected] is the normal (either existing or non-existing) email address of your website.

 

Example:

 

mail('[email protected]', 'test email!', 'This is a test.', 'From: [email protected]'."\r\n", "[email protected]");