# Very presistent Internal Server Error

**URL:** <https://help.nextcloud.com/t/very-presistent-internal-server-error/67725>\
**Category:** ℹ️ Support\
**Tags:** nc17, nc16, apache\
**Created:** [January 9, 2020, 10:05am UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/very-presistent-internal-server-error/67725 "2020-01-09T10:05:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![BZXLfGIJ6S](https://help.nextcloud.com/letter_avatar/bzxlfgij6s/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@BZXLfGIJ6S](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/BZXLfGIJ6S)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2020, 10:19pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/very-presistent-internal-server-error/67725/3 "2020-02-21T22:19:25Z")

</div>

love when you just keep being logic about things and in the end you actualy solve the problem.

So first, i did some more investigations about the fact, that i get this \*\* internatl server error but then my error log does not show me any errors… - ppl in the internet were saying this can be caused by broken php scripts and or php modules - so i checked over all my modules again updated, checked them and set them up right version. - didnt help.

i also set up another instance of nextcloud to see if the server is actually broken.  
as this was working perfectly fine (and much faster than my actual instance) i came back to

> i think - the only things i didnt’ replace by now is  
> the data directory  
> the database  
> the config file

so i  
**Went into my config.php and started to Mess up things**  
when i broke the path to the data directory - i suddenly got a proper answer from the webui. (it loaded!!) and told me wrong directory. i could even log in and everything worked when i made a new valid data directory. (apart from there was no data of course)  
So then i thought **it must be the data directory then**

i checked all permissions (again) and had a lok at what was there. (still files from the owncloud age for example) and started deleting stuff until i got a response from the webui.

in the end it was the **appdata\_instanceid** folder. i tried quiet a while to reconstruct that first from my new nextcloud instance and then from my backups (since i have plenty of them) - but nothing acutally worked fully… ( kinda bad sign)

**then i learned about that [What is the appdata\_ocpom4nckwru directory? - #9 by Andymoene](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/what-is-the-appdata-ocpom4nckwru-directory/19900/9) and that [Screwed up data/appdata\_instanceid - #3 by immersenetworks](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/screwed-up-data-appdata-instanceid/7569/3). and that finally got my instance up and runnung.**

only 2 months of webui downtime…

So in the end and after ~20+ hours of troubleshooting i think here is what happened (also based on what i saw in the backup iterations):

I started the Update (to latest 16) in the webui and that destroyed my appdata folder. (actually there was only the preview folder left in it) - then neither the commandline updater nor the nextcloud fix/repair commands fixed that. - **very bad**

So i highly recommend to change stuff that this cannot happen. - eighter the appdata folder should get checked/fixed by the repair commands or it should not be able to cause such a severe problem aka should give out an appropriate error in webui…

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_[View the full topic](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/very-presistent-internal-server-error/67725)._