500 internal server error

After launching my server, I attempted to access it with my server’s IP in port 300 and received the following error:

500 Internal Server Error If you are the administrator of this website, then please read this web application’s log file and/or the web server’s log file to find out what went wrong

It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to find the logs, and by then I was no longer getting the above 500 error in my browser. Even stranger are the logs I found:

Jun 29 00:09:54 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5077]: Received disconnect from 117.50.46.36 port 49476:11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Jun 29 00:09:54 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5077]: Disconnected from invalid user misp 117.50.46.36 port 49476 [preauth]
Jun 29 00:10:17 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5079]: Invalid user student3 from 132.145.170.174 port 56143
Jun 29 00:10:17 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5079]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): check pass; user unknown
Jun 29 00:10:17 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5079]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=132.145.170.174
Jun 29 00:10:19 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5079]: Failed password for invalid user student3 from 132.145.170.174 port 56143 ssh2
Jun 29 00:10:19 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5079]: Received disconnect from 132.145.170.174 port 56143:11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Jun 29 00:10:19 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5079]: Disconnected from invalid user student3 132.145.170.174 port 56143 [preauth]
Jun 29 00:11:47 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5081]: Invalid user wn from 132.145.170.174 port 64662
Jun 29 00:11:47 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5081]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): check pass; user unknown
Jun 29 00:11:47 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5081]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=132.145.170.174
Jun 29 00:11:48 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5081]: Failed password for invalid user wn from 132.145.170.174 port 64662 ssh2
Jun 29 00:11:48 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5081]: Received disconnect from 132.145.170.174 port 64662:11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Jun 29 00:11:48 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5081]: Disconnected from invalid user wn 132.145.170.174 port 64662 [preauth]
Jun 29 00:13:15 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5085]: Invalid user admin from 132.145.170.174 port 16670
Jun 29 00:13:15 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5085]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): check pass; user unknown
Jun 29 00:13:15 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5085]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=132.145.170.174
Jun 29 00:13:18 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5085]: Failed password for invalid user admin from 132.145.170.174 port 16670 ssh2
Jun 29 00:13:18 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5085]: Received disconnect from 132.145.170.174 port 16670:11: Bye Bye [preauth]
Jun 29 00:13:18 sharetribe-chi1 sshd[5085]: Disconnected from invalid user admin 132.145.170.174 port 16670 [preauth]

Any ideas?

Looks like you’ve dumped the journalctl log and not server log.
And all those lines are related to sshd not the app server.

BTW If there’s no user with username=student3 then most probably someone is bruteforcing your vps, according to the journalctl log.