503 error accessing Adobe Commerce in web browser

This article provides a possible solution for the issue where you get a 503 error when trying to access Adobe Commerce storefront and/or Admin.

Affected products and versions

Adobe Commerce 2.3.x

Issue

Steps to reproduce

(Prerequisites: make sure the store is not in maintenance mode).

Navigate to your Commerce Admin or storefront in a web browser.

Expected result

The page loads.

Actual result

You get the HTTP 503 (Service Unavailable) error. The Apache error.log includes the following message:

Invalid command 'Order', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration.

Cause

Apache 2.4 compatibility module mod_access_compat is disabled, which results in Adobe Commerce URL rewrites not working properly.

Solution

Enable the mod_access_compat Apache module and restart Apache, by running the following as a user with 'root' privileges:

a2enmod access_compat
service <name> restart

On CentOS,

<name>

is

httpd

. On Ubuntu,

<name>

is

apache2

.

Related reading

• Apache documentation about mod_access_compat
• Apache documentation about mod_authz_host
• Order, Allow, Deny from the Apache Definitive Guide
• askubuntu.com