500 Internal Server Error
The server broke. If you write it by hand, something more specific is usually truer.
500Server error
- What it means
- The server broke. If you write it by hand, something more specific is usually truer.
- In practice
- The catch-all: an unhandled exception, a null where a value was assumed, a database mid-restart. As a client there is nothing to fix — report it or retry later. As an operator, a 500 means look at your logs, not at the request: by definition the server failed to cope with something it should have handled, even if that something was invalid input.
- Whose problem is it?
- The server (or something behind it). The request may have been fine.
Often confused with