Websites on LiteSpeed 404
If websites hosted on a LiteSpeed server suddenly begin returning 404 Not Found errors, it is often not a file-system issue, but rather a license restriction preventing the server from routing traffic to that specific domain.
Diagnostic Steps
- SSH into the server where the website's Application Role is currently pointed.
-
Inspect the LiteSpeed error log to check for licensing warnings. Use the
tailcommand to view the most recent entries:tail -f /var/local/LxRoot/litespeedlogs/error.log
-
Search the log output for a warning similar to the following:
[WARN] [27] [T0] [yourdomain.com] is 6 domain, over the domain limit of your license
If this warning is present, LiteSpeed has stopped serving new domains because you have exceeded your current license tier's limit. You must upgrade your LiteSpeed license to a tier that supports more domains.
Why is this happening?
LiteSpeed Enterprise licenses are tiered based on the number of domains hosted on the server. When you add a domain that exceeds your limit, LiteSpeed will continue to serve existing sites but will return a 404 for any site added after the limit was reached.