There was a problem processing the uploaded file. -200

[Arthmoor]

We just upgraded our site to version 4.3.3 of the forum software, after which uploads larger than a certain point are no longer possible.

I'm trying to upload a file into the Downloads module of about 150MB. It's a 7zip file, which we've uploaded plenty of times in the past without issue. The category for the downloads that I'm trying to put the file into has a limit of 512MB set in the permissions. PHP has the upload_max_filesize value set to 2048MB, and the post_max_size value set to 2048MB, so it shouldn't be a server error of any sort. Permissions on the Uploads and Downloads folders in the package are set to 777 as recommended, and I can even see that the forum created a new folder in Downloads for June 2018 just fine. So the software clearly has permission to write files.

So I started trying to narrow this down with various sized files I could find. One file at 113MB uploads fine. Another at 130MB does not. So I'm guessing that some new 128MB restriction got introduced somewhere, but I can't find it. Nothing in the AdminCP points to this anywhere.

After searching Google for the exact error in the title, I am finding it exclusively comes up for IPB installs, but the annoying thing is they go back for years and nobody ever finds a solution that I can see. They just work around it by fiddling with things until it works. Unfortunately those have also been for nothing but image files, but I'm not uploading an image.

I have checked server logs, no errors of any sort are thrown. I've checked IPB's own logs, no errors are thrown there either. I've run out of places I can think to look.

[SJ77]

I have the EXACT same problem.

I reply on uploads working for my site to generate money.

BEFORE 4.3.3 I had nearly 1000 files uploaded.

I changed none of my server settings and suddenly it's VERY difficult to upload anything without getting that stupid error.

My users are pissed. Rarely used to get complaints regarding this error and now, I have had 10 complaints in just the last few days alone.

I filled out a support ticket and So far IPS has suggested,

• uploads don't work in my browser
• my host is the problem (which it is my server)
• my server admin is the problem (which is me)

I didn't change a single server setting. This software stopped working for what I need it to do.

I really hope we can get some help for this issue. It's VERY important for my site. I upgraded to priority support just to see if I could put some urgency behind this.

@Matt

@bfarber @Lindy

[SJ77]

it's weird it always fails AFTER it's 100% uploaded

 

like after it uploads it does some processing of some sort then fails

BTW: https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/437823-the-dreaded-error-200-during-uploads/

 

[Arthmoor]

It's definitely not a browser issue. I tried it in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and IE. They all failed to upload the file.

I don't see how this could be a server config issue either since I run my own server on a Linode VPS. No shared account issues. Prior to 4.3.3 the sever had exactly the same configuration since I'm on an Ubuntu LTS install. Plus the fact that all Google hits come from IPB based sites and nowhere else.

[opentype]

38 minutes ago, Arthmoor said:

Plus the fact that all Google hits come from IPB based sites and nowhere else.

Of course they do. It’s an IPS error code. However, it is a generic error code as a catch-all for “file processing errors”. It does not point to a specific problem. Dozens of problems can result in that same error. 

[Xenboy]

@Arthmoor: I feel like I wrote this somewhere already, but I can't find it, so I'll say this:

The -200 error could be caused by a wide variety of issues (as @opentype noted), both code related AND server related.

You say:

1 hour ago, Arthmoor said:

I don't see how this could be a server config issue

but you don't mention if you actually checked everywhere on your server or are just assuming that it couldn't be a server-side issue because you don't think anything is different or has changed.

I'd definitely check your server first. While it may be that you didn't specifically change anything lately, that doesn't mean nothing has changed. Perhaps something has changed in IPS in a way that now runs afoul of the settings on your server (where it didn't before), which means it is something you can fix.

For example, should you happen to have a web application firewall product like mod_security, some rules and limitations that product can enforce will sometimes cause the -200 error.

You should tail your web server error log while uploading something and see if anything gets output there when the error appears in IPS.

If you don't see anything there or in a local error_log file, then I'd use strace to see what is going on.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Strace

Since it outputs all system calls, you'll see errors in the output (so long as you increase the string output length) even if the content gets /dev/nulled by IPS. Warning: If you've never used strace before, it can look a bit daunting and it will output a ton of data and slow down execution of the script while running.

[BomAle]

related topic:

 

[SJ77]

@Xenboy 

— I’ve had two admins look at my server settings in addition to myself all 3 of us confirm with confidence that server settings are such that it should not be having the error

— the server was not changed and the error started to appear regularly right when 4.3 was installed 

— This exact issue is replicated by more than just me. As you see @Arthmoor is having an identical issue. So are others as linked in other threads 

— the files upload 100% before the error happens. It’s during the processing phase when the error occurs 

While to your point, there could just be a lot of coincidence occurrences happening here; but it’s sounding VERY unlikely.  It most likely is an error introduced by 4.3 that effects those of us who upload large files using downloads 

 

[Xenboy]

@SJ77: To be clear, I was not suggesting that it was impossible that there is a code issue causing the problem Arthmoor reported. What I did actually say is that they should do a deep dive on their server to ensure there really isn't a problem that they could fix. I did have an issue with larger uploads myself under 4.3.x, but I tracked down the issue to a mod_security rule and have since uploaded lots of files between 500 MB and 2.1 GB without a single issue under 4.3.3.

Of course, your server is not likely to have exactly the same setup as mine and perhaps that is contributing to the issue. This is why it's good to test things on your end first. Even if you don't fix the problem, you may help narrow down the solution and if you happen to find a work around or solution on your own, then your members benefit from getting a fix right away. If you've already done a deep dive on your server and ruled it out, the next step is to report the issue appropriately to IPS's technical support. Hopefully with your help and access to your server they will be able to find any server or code related issues causing the problem.

[Arthmoor]

I've already gone fishing in the logs, including tailing them all to try and spot something. There's nothing to spot. Everything worked perfectly fine on 4.3.2, for files all the way up to our limit of 2GB per upload. With 4.3.3, that no longer works. Files larger than 128MB are rejected with the cryptic and useless -200 error.

Which is another beef I have. Errors thrown by this software need to be informative so that we can actually make a proper attempt at diagnosing the problem. A -200 error is literally the equivalent of "There was an error". That's absolutely useless.

Given the strong evidence found via Google that only this package ever throws this error, and other packages I have on the same server uploading the same files to their own areas don't also have the same problem, it's definitely something IPS did in 4.3.3. There were an awful lot of files uploaded during that upgrade. Any one of them could be where the error actually comes from.

Plus I'm clearly NOT the only one having this problem as I can see there's one other thread here I didn't notice as well. The company shirking its duties on this isn't sitting well and if there were ANY other decent package out there that supported as robust an uploads module I'd already have ditched this one in favor of it. IPB routinely fails to take responsibility for issues under their control and it's very annoying considering we're paying good money for this.

[SJ77]

To be fair there are many other threads on here about this issue. 

4 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

Plus I'm clearly NOT the only one having this problem as I can see there's one other thread here.

 

[opentype]

9 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

Errors thrown by this software need to be informative so that we can actually make a proper attempt at diagnosing the problem. A -200 error is literally the equivalent of "There was an error". That's absolutely useless.

The IPS software needs to interact with the many server components and it expects certain results. There will be lots of situations where the IPS software simply cannot know what happened when an action failed, because the server and the many components on it simply don’t report that. 

 

9 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

Given the strong evidence found via Google that only this package ever throws this error, and other packages I have on the same server uploading the same files to their own areas don't also have the same problem, it's definitely something IPS did in 4.3.3.

That logic is flawed and this has already been pointed out to you. Please don’t repeat it again and even call it “evidence” and “definite”. 
Just because the IPS software is reporting with a custom code that an action failed doesn’t necessarily mean the error is caused by the IPS software. 
 

9 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

Plus I'm clearly NOT the only one having this problem as I can see there's one other thread here I didn't notice as well.

There are many topics since – as again was already pointed out – it is a generic error that happens for many reasons. The fact that there are many topics about this error message again doesn’t help to make your case that it a bug in the IPS software. 

[SJ77]

@Arthmoor 

do you have cloudflare by chance?

also are you uploads getting to 100% before failing?

[SJ77]

Feeling anxiety over this issue. It has put my site at a stop.  I have already had 3 of my contributors quit.  My BEST contributor is expressing extreme frustration and I fear she may quit soon.  Any ideas at all are welcome! 

[AlexWebsites]

I just went through a similar issue and had IPS support involved. I can say it wasn't cloudflare even though with the free tier its max 100MB. I was having an issue with anything over 35MB. My issue was actually caused by an HTTP timeout transferring the uploaded file from my server to S3. IPS made an adjustment to constants.php from 30 to 60 to test.

define( 'LONG_REQUEST_TIMEOUT', 60 );

I then engaged my server data center to find out if there were network issues and they came back with the server TCP stack needing some adjustments which made uploading much much better at around 21Mb/sec uploading with transferring to S3. 

It drove me crazy for over a week. I ended up removing cloudflare, increasing memory limits and testing amazon S3 uploads.  If you are using an external storage source, you may have a similar issue because the upload goes off into server memory and then to the storage. 

[giventoflyfish]

Any updates to this issue. I'm experiencing the same issue since the upgrade to 4.3.3. I have tons of photos uploaded and made no changes.

 

[SJ77]

3 hours ago, giventoflyfish said:

Any updates to this issue. I'm experiencing the same issue since the upgrade to 4.3.3. I have tons of photos uploaded and made no changes.

 

Waiting on support. I’ve had a ticket submitted for over a week. Maybe they will figure this out and patch the issue for all

[LDDG]

7 hours ago, SJ77 said:

Waiting on support. I’ve had a ticket submitted for over a week. Maybe they will figure this out and patch the issue for all

Good luck with that

[Arthmoor]

On 6/3/2018 at 10:41 PM, opentype said:

That logic is flawed and this has already been pointed out to you. Please don’t repeat it again and even call it “evidence” and “definite”. 
Just because the IPS software is reporting with a custom code that an action failed doesn’t necessarily mean the error is caused by the IPS software. 

You are who again? Not staff? Then why should I accept your word that it's not an IPS issue when there's nothing at all to suggest otherwise?

Given that the server operated perfectly fine under the same conditions for years running all manner of different forum packages in that time, I'm confident this is strictly an IPS issue specific to the 4.3.3 update. Something they did with that code broke this function. It's that simple. It's way too specifically centered around the 128MB marker to be anything else.

Unless they're trying to get people to switch to competing products that actually work, it's in their interest to investigate this properly and fix it.

On 6/4/2018 at 6:09 AM, SJ77 said:

@Arthmoor 

do you have cloudflare by chance?

also are you uploads getting to 100% before failing?

I don't use Cloudflare, and yes, every upload gets all the way to 100% before failing for no reason whatsoever. Not a single log entry in any server log as to why. Which is why I'm 100% certain this isn't an issue with my server.

[AlexWebsites]

26 minutes ago, Arthmoor said:

I don't  use Cloudflare, and yes, every upload gets all the way to 100% before failing for no reason whatsoever. Not a single log entry in any server log as to why. Which is why I'm 100% certain this isn't an issue with my server.

Are you using an external storage source for downloads like Amazon S3 or other CDN?  

[SJ77]

37 minutes ago, Arthmoor said:

 

I don't use Cloudflare, and yes, every upload gets all the way to 100% before failing for no reason whatsoever. Not a single log entry in any server log as to why. Which is why I'm 100% certain this isn't an issue with my server.

This is my same issue EXACTLY. I have had a service request in since May 30th and still waiting for a solution 

[Woodsman]

On 6/2/2018 at 5:04 PM, Arthmoor said:

We just upgraded our site to version 4.3.3 of the forum software, after which uploads larger than a certain point are no longer possible.

I'm trying to upload a file into the Downloads module of about 150MB. It's a 7zip file, which we've uploaded plenty of times in the past without issue. The category for the downloads that I'm trying to put the file into has a limit of 512MB set in the permissions. PHP has the upload_max_filesize value set to 2048MB, and the post_max_size value set to 2048MB, so it shouldn't be a server error of any sort. Permissions on the Uploads and Downloads folders in the package are set to 777 as recommended, and I can even see that the forum created a new folder in Downloads for June 2018 just fine. So the software clearly has permission to write files.

So I started trying to narrow this down with various sized files I could find. One file at 113MB uploads fine. Another at 130MB does not. So I'm guessing that some new 128MB restriction got introduced somewhere, but I can't find it. Nothing in the AdminCP points to this anywhere.

After searching Google for the exact error in the title, I am finding it exclusively comes up for IPB installs, but the annoying thing is they go back for years and nobody ever finds a solution that I can see. They just work around it by fiddling with things until it works. Unfortunately those have also been for nothing but image files, but I'm not uploading an image.

I have checked server logs, no errors of any sort are thrown. I've checked IPB's own logs, no errors are thrown there either. I've run out of places I can think to look.

If you are allowed to do this on your own or try getting your host to change these lines in the php.ini file.

post_max_size = 8M
upload_max_filesize = 2M

to (around)

post_max_size = 80M
upload_max_filesize = 200M

[opentype]

4 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

You are who again? Not staff? Then why should I accept your word that it's not an IPS issue when there's nothing at all to suggest otherwise?

I did not make the claim that it is not an IPS issue. Don’t assume my position, just because it disagree with things you say. Try to read and understand what I actually say. I explained that your claim that it is “definitely” an IPS issue cannot be made from the premises you provided. And that is matter of logic. You need to accept it, because logic is not subjective. And so it doesn’t matter who I am.
But I have nothing more to add. I you cannot understand the logic of this simple sentence, then I won’t waste my time with it any longer: “Just because the IPS software is reporting with a custom code that an action failed doesn’t necessarily mean the error is caused by the IPS software.” 

[Joel R]

11 hours ago, Arthmoor said:

You are who again? Not staff? Then why should I accept your word that it's not an IPS issue when there's nothing at all to suggest otherwise?

Given that the server operated perfectly fine under the same conditions for years running all manner of different forum packages in that time, I'm confident this is strictly an IPS issue specific to the 4.3.3 update. Something they did with that code broke this function. It's that simple. It's way too specifically centered around the 128MB marker to be anything else.

Unless they're trying to get people to switch to competing products that actually work, it's in their interest to investigate this properly and fix it.

I don't use Cloudflare, and yes, every upload gets all the way to 100% before failing for no reason whatsoever. Not a single log entry in any server log as to why. Which is why I'm 100% certain this isn't an issue with my server.

If you're insistent that it's an IPS issue, then .... Create a support ticket in the Client Area.  

Stop getting mad at your fellow IPS admins.  

[TDBF]

12 hours ago, SJ77 said:

This is my same issue EXACTLY. I have had a service request in since May 30th and still waiting for a solution 

I am fairly sure that v4.3.3 has an issue writing to cache or tmp directory on the server.

Since I upgraded to 4.3.3 I have had intermittent issues saving css and templates (cannot find the file you are looking for, or words to that effect) in the Templates editor (both for CMS and Themes). At first I thought this might be a problem with caching or an issue with Mod Security, but this still happens on my localhost server where I don't have either of those on.

This is defiantly an issue with 4.3.3, so I wouldn't go and start changing your server settings etc.

Submit a ticket and let the devs look into it.