Big uploads failing only on Firefox?

  • We’ve been facing an issue on our site for a couple of months that’s been very hard to fix, because for a long time I thought it was a server-side issue and just found out that it’s probably not.

    Although we have plenty of server resources, high CPU/memory/timeout limits, etc., whenever I upload images that are more or less bigger than 8-10MB to WordPress, it fails in the processing step after exactly 30 seconds.

    What I mean is: the upload finishes very quickly (I have a 1Gbps fiber connection), then I count 30 seconds after the WordPress’ upload bar has filled, and this error comes up: https://d.pr/i/XWVCbr

    For SEO’s sake, it says:

    The server cannot process the image. This can happen if the server is busy or does not have enough resources to complete the task. Uploading a smaller image may help. Suggested maximum size is 2560 pixels.

    Of course, smaller images aren’t an issue (probably because they finish processing before the 30-second limit). Another weird thing is that, even when WordPress presents that error, sometimes the large image does get successfully processed anyway. But not always.

    As the error implies, for a long while I thought it was a server-side issue. We’ve looked into everything: PHP, Apache, ImageMagick, ModSecurity, Cloudflare… no good.

    Long story short, I recently found out that this doesn’t happen at all when uploading images via Safari. I can even upload like a 40MB image, it will take a while to process, but it doesn’t ever stop/break at 30 seconds and always process it successfully.

    So, what gives? Is this really a Firefox issue? I tried playing with lots of about:config settings related to some kind of 30-second timeout, but still haven’t figured it out. Any ideas? Thanks!

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • Hi @rfischmann,

    Sorry to hear that you have been facing a problem for a long time.

    The issue looks strange. If the issue is only on Firefox, you have to dig into the Firefox settings. Have you tried uploading images to WordPress after disabling all add-ons and extensions? You have to try it if you don’t.

    It’s recommended to raise the same question in the Mozilla community support forum. Also, I found a similar question in the Mozilla support forum. Somehow, the support thread may help you.

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1103225

    Hope this helps.

    Thank You,
    Muhammed Jazeel

    Thread Starter Rafael Fischmann

    (@rfischmann)

    Yes, I’ve tried disabling all add-ons/extensions, clearing caches/cookies and also hoping into Firefox’s Safe Mode, and have asked a friend to also try from his computer and the same thing happened to him on Firefox.

    I’ll open a ticket on Mozilla’s support forum as well, thanks. That one you’ve linked to is very old and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my issue.

    Hi @rfischmann,

    Thank for reply.

    Let me know once you find a solution. I am also curious to know about the reason behind strange issues like this.

    Regards,
    Muhammed Jazeel

    Is there nothing in the error log from the server?

    Thread Starter Rafael Fischmann

    (@rfischmann)

    @threadi We’ve been looking into those for the past couple of months, trying to figure out the cause of the issue, but although there were a few ModSecurity logs especially, in the end they weren’t related at all. We even completely disabled ModSecurity and Cloudflare for testing once, and the behavior didn’t change.

    I really think it’s not a server-side issue, otherwise it wouldn’t work fine via Safari.

    The 30 seconds are very obvious. This is such a round number that it must be configured somewhere – not in the browser. Hence my question about the log file, because if it is a timeout, it should show up in the log file.

    Another thought: have you moved the project to another server (perhaps locally) and tested it there? I’m guessing that it will work there.

    Thread Starter Rafael Fischmann

    (@rfischmann)

    Yeah, I “like” the fact about the exact 30 seconds too, @threadi. That’s why I looked and tried playing with many settings in Firefox’s about:config that had 30s (or 30000ms) set in them, but nothing worked.

    If it was a timeout set in the server, it would for sure show up in logs and it would also timeout when uploading images via Safari — which does not happen…

    Unfortunately I don’t have another server to move everything just to test this, so haven’t tried that.

    You don’t need a server for this. You seem to be technically savvy enough to be able to set it up locally. A VM or with Docker, XAMP, MAMP, LAMP … whatever. I think it would be worth a try.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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