WordPress: “HTTP Error.” When Uploading Files

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I’m running WP 3.0.1 on a shared host using PHP5. I’m having issues uploading files that are a little larger via the media uploader in the admin section of WP.

Every time I try to upload a file thats over a few megabytes, it uploads, says its crunching, then gives me a big red “HTTP Error.” – nothing more.

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This only happens on files that are a little larger – ie a 20mb .mp3 file. A 5mb file seems to work fine. Whats weird is in the past we’ve uploaded 40mb files without a problem.

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Here’s the steps I’ve taken so far to try and remedy the situation:

  1. Double checked php.ini to ensure increase upload, post and memory size were high enough.
  2. Updated .htaccess to include filter the security mod I found elsewhere.
  3. Double checked all file permissions via ftp to ensure they were 755.
  4. Called the host – “They don’t support 3rd party scripts” (I hate IPower)
  5. Tried with different audio files of similar size.
  6. Disabled all plugins

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Do you guys have any more ideas regarding what might be causing the vague “HTTP Error.” problem?

Thanks in advance.

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11 comments

  1. I had a similar problem with Nginx and PHP5-FPM (and WordPress 4.1).

    Symptoms: the file (< 5MB, so relatively small) is partway through the transfer, as indicated by the progress bar, when suddenly you get the HTTP error message.

    Even if you’ve set upload_max_filesize in your php.ini, you should also check post_max_size is (at least) as big. Remember to restart php5-fpm.

    If it still doesn’t work, edit your nginx.conf file (in Debian/Ubuntu it’s /etc/nginx/nginx.conf) and add this in the http block:

    client_max_body_size 100m;

    Then restart Nginx.

  2. One of our clients, had the same issue.

    Finally we found out that the wordpress “HTTP Error” when uploading images, was happening due to a change on the server side. The hosting comany, decided to add APC accelerate to the server in order to increase server’s stability and speed. APC accelerate should work only with FastCGI and not with su, so they set PHP to run as FastCGI.

    When using PHP as FastCGI, if you try to upload a file larger than 128KB, an error “mod_fcgid: HTTP request length 131388 (so far) exceeds MaxRequestLen (131072)” occurs and causes an 550 internal server error.
    This happens because the value of MaxRequestLen directive is set to 131072 bytes (128KB) by default.
    One way to correct this (if server uses Plesk), is to edit /etc/httpd/conf.d/fcgid.conf and set MaxRequestLen to a higher value, for example 15MB (MaxRequestLen 15728640).
    If server uses cPanel, this change can be done via the WHM of the server.

    So, if you can upload images up to 128KB, this is the solution to your problem.

  4. The problem, as you’ve already inferred, is in the size of your file upload. Just to remind you, HTTP isn’t really built for transferring large files … it can do it, but not always, and not very well. You’re running into an issue where your host is cutting off the transfer because the file is too large. It’s most likely a server setting somewhere that you don’t have access to.

    Since “they don’t support 3rd party scripts” I’m guessing you’re in a shared hosting environment, which is why something could change on your server without you doing anything. Possible solutions:

    1. Get a different host
    2. Use a dedicated server
    3. Transfer your larger files via FTP rather than from within WordPress.

  5. I had the same issue whenever I tried to upload media, except I got the “HTTP Error” on files larger than 124Kb! WP 3.3.1, PHP 5.2.

    I called my host and they upped memory to 64M (also changed this in wp-config) and upload_limit to 8 MB (default was 2 MB). This didn’t work so I resorted to almost everything else, from tampering with the .htaccess to reinstalling WP to installing a fresh WP on another server, but everything pointed to a server issue. I called the host again and spoke to another technician who increased the allowed HTTP Request Length setting.

  6. For future readers, just managed to find the solution to this one after a tough day of searching.

    There’s a setting in the fcgid.conf file (for me in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled): FcgidMaxRequestLen. See https://httpd.apache.org/mod_fcgid/mod/mod_fcgid.html#fcgidmaxrequestlen

    I set that in bytes to an appropriate length and everything works. It seems that apache have changed their thinking on the default value (which is now 131072 bytes):

    Before 2.3.6, this defaulted to 1GB. Most users of earlier versions should use this directive to set a more reasonable limit.

  7. server maybe have imagick installed as default library , for a fix for wordpress

    I put the following code into my functions.php file. It works!

    add_filter( 'wp_image_editors', 'change_graphic_lib' );

function change_graphic_lib($array) {
  return array( 'WP_Image_Editor_GD', 'WP_Image_Editor_Imagick' );
}

  8. For me, “http error” issue occurred when php is running in fast cgi mode.

    “MaxRequestLen” from mod_fcgid was limiting file upload size and wordpress was throwing “http error”.

    You need to add the following configurations in your httpd.conf (apache2.conf on ubuntu 14) :

    <IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
  # 20MB
  MaxRequestLen 20000000
</IfModule>

  9. I tried all the commonly suggested php.ini changes as well as wp-config changes with no luck. Finally found someone suggesting to look at the XHR async-upload.php details in my browser and found out that our firewall was flagging the upload as a trojan (MalAgent.H_9218 to be specific) for some reason. So don’t forget to check there, it could identify other possible upload issues as well.

    Chrome instructions:
    Hit F12 and select the network tab, then attempt an upload with WordPress, make sure the filter row is on either All or XHR, in the left bottom pane find and select async-upload.php, in the right bottom pane select preview.