How to allow large file uploads in support tickets?

[BryanB]

Is there away to allow large file uploads in support tickets? Sometimes we have problems with high-res .jpegs timing out and the support ticket submission failing. It also seems to be a problem even when piping in emails to the support address... although these 2 issues may be unrelated.

 

I'm wondering if there is a way to extend the time-out period. Either in WHMCS or my with my server? I'm hosted with hostgator but was wondering how those file sending websites like YouSendit.com or transferbigfiles.com manage to send such large files up to 1GB+

[BryanB]

any suggestions?

[rmccny]

You should check your PHP configuration in php.ini..

 

For example, to be able to upload up to 100M

 

upload_max_filesize = 100M
post_max_size = 110M

It's always good to set post_max_size a little higher than the upload_max_filesize as that settings includes the size of the entire POST transaction.

[sparky]

If you find that the php session is timeing out after altering the php settings above then add

$overidephptimelimit=600;

to your whmcs configuration.php

By default whmcs sets this to 300 seconds.

[rmccny]

Good advice Sparky, although max_execution_time should not affect uploads since PHP doesn't get called until the file is uploaded (at least in theory). However that brings me to think of another setting that may potentially have to be looked at if large uploads are still failing....

 

If you are running any kind of FastCGI implementation chances are it has it's own timeout setting in which the FastCGI process will be killed. Again, this shouldn't be an issue since PHP should not be called until the web server has received the file, but then again, you never know.

 

Good luck!

[sparky]

On second thought by changing the time limit in whmcs then all pages in whmcs would have the same limit. Probably would be best to use this in your php upload script instead so that it will only affect your upload script.

@set_time_limit(600);

This site is a little old but should help out a little more

http://www.radinks.com/upload/config.php

[BryanB]

Thanks guys, I'm still having a problem though. It looks like the max file size setting worked, I changed it to 100M but I'm still getting support tickets where clients are uploading images and the images are not coming through just the message in the ticket.

 

Php info: http://virtualstagingsolutions.com/phpinfo.php

 

I added

$overidephptimelimit=600;

to the config file but still no luck. I also tested uploading a 20MB file in a ticket and it kept failing.

 

Any ideas?

Edited February 4, 2010 by BryanB

[rmccny]

Unfortunately, max_execution_time does not affect uploads and changing $overidephptimelimit or set_time_limit() will have no effect. The last setting in PHP that you want to look at is max_input_time which should be set to 600-900 seconds (10-15 minutes).

 

Also, are you running CGI/FastCGI? If so you should look into timeout settings there. For example, Apache has a request timeout limit that could be affecting you and most FastCGI implementation have a timeout setting as does IIS on Windows. I'm willing to bet you're hitting one of those limits.

[BryanB]

Thanks, I contacted my hosting company and they made some changes. It seems to be working now