Clean WHM/cPanel install and Wordpress back end 500 Internal Errors

[InteractM]

I have vmware machine (4 cores, 18GB mem) with clean install of CentOS 6.6 and WHM 11.48.4.4 where I have copied Wordpress site from BlueHost (no major issues there).

After one day of regular usage Wordpress back-end got random but often 500 Internal Errors which I'm not able to locate in the Apache error logs. One thing what I have notices is CPU core0 spikes above 90% when those 500 Internal Errors show up and it looks like PHP is causing those spikes.

EasyApache running as

• Apache 2.2
• PHP 5.4
• MPM Prefork
• Mod Ruid2

with

• PHP 5 Handler cgi
• Apache suEXEC off
• Apache Ruid2 on

Any tips what can be wrong/missconfigured?

Thanks

 

[24x7ss]

Hello ,

This should be checked with Wordpress support forum actually.
But still I can help you with this.
Kindly check if your wordpress is updated to latest version including the plugins & themes. Also check the access_logs of this particular domain, if there is any attack on wp-login.php file. If so, that will surely cause resource consumption.

In that case, you can have any security plugins where you can set Brute Force Attack prevention.

 

[InteractM]

I don't see any attacks on wp-login.php as the back-end access was changed from default one. As I mentioned before for me it looks like issue with PHP (cPanel PHP configuration?) on VM as I have another standalone shared server where I have uploaded same site and nobody is experiencing 500 errors so far.

 

[24x7ss]

Hello,

I would then suggest you to try rebuilding the php with existing setup and see if that makes any difference.

# /scripts/easyapache --build

 

[InteractM]

Yeah - I think this is my next step to go for

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello

It's important to find the corresponding entry in /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log because that will let you know the specific reason for the message. You could try searching the log for the account username. EX:

grep $username /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

Thank you.