Website or Webmail is showing 500 internal server error: command cgi_wrapper not in docroot

Symptoms

• Accessing to Webmail shows a "500 internal server error"

• The following can be seen in the Apache log file:

  # tail -f /var/log/httpd/error_log
  [warn] [client 123.123.123.123] (104)Connection reset by peer: mod_fcgid: error reading data from FastCGI server
  [Thu Dec 05 17:21:00 2013] [error] [client 123.123.123.123] Premature end of script headers: index.php

• The following can be seen in the Suexec log file:

  # tail -f /var/log/httpd/suexec_log
  uid: (501/horde_sysuser) gid: (504/504) cmd: cgi_wrapper
  command cgi_wrapper not in docroot (501)

Cause

CGI wrapper that comes with CentOS' apache RPM is hardcoded to allow only CGI scripts in /var/www

Resolution

Ensure that the /var/www is not a symlink to any other directory:

1. Connect to the server via SSH

2. Check that /var/www is not a symlink to any other directory:

   # ls -ld /var/www
   lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Oct 24 11:14 www -> /mnt/new_path/www/

3. If the symlink exists, remove it

   # rm /var/www

4. Change the vhost location to, for example, /mnt/new_path/www/ using the transvhosts.pl by referring to the following article: How to change virtual hosts location in Plesk for Linux?

5. Create a real directory /var/www/ and copy folders /var/www/cgi-bin and /var/www/cgi-bin/webalizer back from /mnt/new_path/www:

   # cp -pR /mnt/new_path/www/cgi-bin /var/www/
   # cp -pR /mnt/new_path/www/webalizer /var/www/