Fix “HTTP request length 134926 (so far) exceeds MaxRequestLen” error on Linux Ubuntu

If you get a 500 error in a webpage with apache webserver and fastcgi, take a look into the apache error.log file. This can either be the global error.log or the error.log of the website where you got the error. If you find a error similar to this one:

[Fri Apr 9 02:38:12 2014] [warn] [client 100.200.100.10] mod_fcgid: HTTP request length 134926 (so far) exceeds MaxRequestLen (131072), referer: http://www.example.tld/administrator/index.php?option=com_installer

then the MaxRequestLen setting of mod_fccgid is too low. To fix that, edit the file /etc/apache2/mods-available/fcgid.conf

# vi /etc/apache2/mods-available/fcgid.conf

and add or edit the line “MaxRequestLen 15728640″ to set the Request Limit to 15MB. The resulting file should contain these settings:

AddHandler fcgid-script .fcgi
FcgidConnectTimeout 20
MaxRequestLen 15728640

Save the changes and restart apache:

# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart