Apache error "bad file descriptor"

[frizzo]

I've been getting some problems with PHP pages on Apache. Things were working just fine, and then, on some pages, they produce a 500 Internal Server Error. It seems totally random which pages do this.

I FTP into the directory and look at the permissions- 644. Thinking maybe the perms need to allow execution (although 644 works on other php files) I attempt to change perms on the file through FTP to enable execution, and get this error: "550 Could not change perms on oldnewsletters.php: Bad file descriptor"

If I view and then save the text of the file, delete the original and then re-upload it (the SAME text), without changing anything, it works just fine. This is happening all at once across several sites on a single dedicated server, and I'm wondering if somehow the server is corrupting. I've never experienced this before.

The quic fix of re-uploading works fine for now, but I'm wondering how it happed in the first place. All of the pages worked just fine before, nothing was changed.

Is this a common problem with Apache? I realize the forum is for PHP, but assume that maybe some other PHP developers have experienced this in the past and cold shed some light. Any ideas?

Thanks
Frizzo

[dalecosp]

"Bad file descriptor" smells like a problem in the FTP client you're using. FD's are things like "standard out, standard in, standard error", and it seems to me like the FTP client doesn't have the facility for all this? I could be wrong, and often am, of course.

It would be much better IMHO to change perms with a shell, if one's available. However, I realize that many times it's not that way.

The "re upload" thing sounds a lot like incompatibility between systems (you don't mention much about these computers), but that's a very wild guess, and there probably are several other more likely possibilities.

The underlying and real problem is the HTTP 500 error. Do you have any additional info on that?

Incidentally, how are you "viewing and then saving" the "text of the file"?

[frizzo]

Thanks for the reply, this is a real weird issue.

Even simpler -- I download the file with FTP, delete the original, and then upload the same exact file back, and it works!!

Not all of the files get there thru FTP either. Some are created automatically by a CMS. Yet not all of the CMS created files are doing this. It's totally random. .docs and .pdfs have ended up with the internal server error also.

Any more ideas?? Thanks.

[dalecosp]

Well, my best idea is the first one that occurred when I read this thread --- get PHP out of the #$%#^#$% script dir and loaded into Apache as a shared object ... but that likely means you change hosts.

For real options, and a brief mention of what I was getting at with the "incompatibility between systems" remark: http://www.indiana.edu/~wmhome/PHPlanguage/index.shtml

HTH,