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I'm offering large downloads from my server of around 6.5gb and doing so using PHP and x-sendfile.

This has been working fine for months however recently the downloads have been ending prematurely for users at anywhere from 3gb-5.5gb.

No errors are given in the browsers (tried Chrome, Firefox and IE) they behave as if the downloads have completed but the filesize is smaller than it should be.

From my limited understanding this usually happens because no data is sent for a certain period of time and the browser mistakes this for the download having completed.

However I am struggling to find any specific information about how browsers behave in this regard.

I have contacted my host to see if they can help identify the problem at their end, perhaps the connection is being interrupted or something, however they insist it must be an issue with my servers configuration, even though nothing changed in the setup of the server around the time this began.

Now I am at a complete loss of how to investigate this. The time the download stops is completely random. Different file sizes, different amount of time taken and no errors in the server logs or in the browser.

Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to investigate this or has anyone had any similar problems before and found a fix?

John Mellor
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  • Have you tried monitoring the servers log files? If it's not the browser causing the issue (and it still might be) it's possible that the server has a time limit to how long one process/request can last before canceling it. Also, are users experiencing problems with downloading files beyond the size of 5.5g? You mentioned some files you offer for download are larger than that. It's interesting how it would only cause trouble somewhere in the middle of the file-size spectrum. – Armin Feb 07 '14 at 16:56
  • You may have misinterpreted. I meant the largest files are 6.5gb and the download stops at around 3-5gb so it has a few gb missing :) I've checked the logs and can't see anything – John Mellor Feb 07 '14 at 17:21
  • Did you ever find a solution to this issue? – Matt Dec 10 '14 at 20:12
  • Crikey 10 months ago, I can't really remember.. I think it was a nginx/cgi/fpm settings. It winds up being the case that you need to set things in multiple places not just not just one place. Look into "FcgidMaxRequestLen" and also "client_max_body_size". Sorry I can't be more specific I don't have any notes on it. – John Mellor Dec 11 '14 at 17:47

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