IIS Tomcat Web Log Error 500 Misleading?

[Kan-Lee Liou]

I have IIS 5.0 and Tomcat 5.0.19 installed on my machine and I have no problems running it to server JSP pages.  However, our web master complained that IIS created a lot of Errors 500 in the web logs.  I tested it on my local machine and I can create the errors in the logs, but I don't see them in the browser.  I suspect they are some "timeout and retry" effort between IIS and Tomcat by isapi_redirector2.dll.    In the following partial log, you can find that for the same JSESSIONID, it logged several GET's (200, success), a couple POST's (500, Internal Server Errors, 4th and 5th line items), and then a POST (200, success, 6th line item).  I did try to refresh the web pages several times quickly in order to create these errors in the log file, but I did not see any error on my screen. ---------------------- 2004-07-14 18:23:07 127.0.0.1 GET /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 200 4117 959 0 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC HTTP://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e 2004-07-14 18:23:07 127.0.0.1 GET /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 200 112 641 0 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC http://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e 2004-07-14 18:23:07 127.0.0.1 GET /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 200 112 640 0 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC http://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e 2004-07-14 18:23:07 127.0.0.1 POST /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 500 89 937 19750 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC http://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e 2004-07-14 18:23:17 127.0.0.1 POST /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 500 89 937 20937 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC http://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e 2004-07-14 18:23:19 127.0.0.1 POST /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 200 510 776 9969 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC http://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e 2004-07-14 18:23:19 127.0.0.1 GET /jakarta/isapi_redirector2.dll 200 4117 798 0 JSESSIONID=7ECBDF34DD859002F06970330B5031EC http://localhost/itswindstorm/wpi8/wpi8_start.jsp?searchAddNum=1106&searchStreet=Second+Street&searchCity=Sweeny&searchCounty=BRAZORIA&errorMsg=%3cb%3eCannot+find+any+address+matching+your+criteria.+%3cbr%3e%0d%0a%09%09%09Please+refine+your+search+criteria.%3c%2fb%3e -----------------------   Our web master insisted that a "good" application should not create Error 500 in the log.  Have you seen similar things in your web logs?  Do you know how to get rid of those 500 errors?  Thanks.   KL