Programming Tutorials

PHP file upload (Large Files)

By: xmontero  

When you upload files using PHP to your webserver, If "large files" (ie: 50 or 100 MB) fail, check this:

It may happen that your outgoing connection to the server is slow, and it may timeout not the "execution time" but the "input time", which for example in our system defaulted to 60s. In our case a large upload could take 1 or 2 hours.

Additionally we had "session settings" that should be preserved after upload.

1) You might want review those ini entries:

* session.gc_maxlifetime
* max_input_time
* max_execution_time
* upload_max_filesize
* post_max_size

2) Still fails? Caution, not all are changeable from the script itself. ini_set() might fail to override.

More info here:
http://www.php.net/manual/es/ini.list.php

You can see that the "upload_max_filesize", among others, is PHP_INI_PERDIR and not PHP_INI_ALL. This invalidates to use ini_set():
http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.modes.php

Use .htaccess instead.

3) Still fails?. Just make sure you enabled ".htaccess" to overwrite your php settings. This is made in the apache file. You need at least AllowOverride Options.

See this here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.php

You will necessarily allow this manually in the case your master files come with AllowOverride None.

Conclussion:

Depending on the system, to allow "large file uploads" you must go up and up and up and touch your config necessarily up to the apache config.

Sample files:

These work for me, for 100MB uploads, lasting 2 hours:

In apache-virtual-host:

<Directory /var/www/MyProgram>
AllowOverride Options
</Directory>


In .htaccess:

php_value session.gc_maxlifetime 10800
php_value max_input_time 10800
php_value max_execution_time 10800
php_value upload_max_filesize 110M
php_value post_max_size 120M


In the example,
- As I last 1 to 2 hours, I allow 3 hours (3600x3)
- As I need 100MB, I allow air above for the file (110M) and a bit more for the whole post (120M).