Apache / Perl download timeout error

Question

Our site provides a upload form for our users to upload photos, which we then store and allow them to share. We use the simple POST method to enable the download, and then process the files using Perl CGI.pm. Here is our Apache installation:

Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 

For some reason, a small percentage of our users encounter a problem when load times and crashes. Here's what our Apache logs report on error:

 (104)Connection reset by peer: Error reading request entity data, referer: http://domain.com/upload/photo 

At first we thought it might be because too little $ CGI :: POST_MAX was not set, so large photos were rejected. Even after increasing to 100 MB, this is still happening. We cannot replicate the problem, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason why users encounter problems, as this happens on different browsers, operating systems, etc. We are also not sure if this is related to the Perl problem or our Apache settings.

I would appreciate any advice on what might be causing this, and suggestions on how to solve the problem. Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

A “reset by peer connection” often indicates that the user has stopped waiting for the download to complete by clicking the Stop or Move button.

Answer 2

You can try to increase the timeout setting in the Apache configuration, if only the network has slow surges.

Also, see this: http://www.mail-archive.com/ [e-mail] /msg00457.html - there may be a 64 MB limit according to this message, although I do not see any supporting evidence.

Also see this example on how to set the reading limit: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.apache.mod-perl/24260