apache - Server timeout when re-assembling the uploaded file

Question

I am running a simple server app to receive uploads from a fine-uploader web client. It is based on the fine-uploader Java example and is running in Tomcat6 with Apache sitting in front of it and using ProxyPass to route the requests. I am running into an occasional problem where the upload gets to 100% but ultimately fails. In the server logs, as well as on the client, I can see that Apache is timing out on the proxy with a 502 error.

After trying and seeing this myself, I realized the problem occurs with really large files. The Java server app was taking longer than 30 seconds to reassemble the chunks into a single file and so Apache would kill the connection and stop waiting. I have increased Apache Timeout to 300 seconds which should largely correct the problem but the potential remains.

Any ideas on other ways to handle this so that the connection between Apache and Tomcat is not killed while the app is assembling the chunks on the server? I am currently using 2 MB chunks and was thinking maybe I should use a larger chunk size. Perhaps with fewer chunks to assemble the server code could do it faster. I could test that but unless the speedup is dramatic it seems like the potential for problems remain and will just be waiting for a large enough upload to come along to trigger them.

Answer 1

It seems like you have two options:

1. Remove the timeout in Apache.
2. Delegate the chunk-combination effort to a separate thread, and return a response to the request as soon as possible.

With the latter approach, you will not be able to let Fine Uploader know if the chunk combination operation failed, but perhaps you can perform a few quick sanity checks before responding, such as determining if all chunks are accessible.

There's nothing Fine Uploader can do here, the issue is server side. After Fine Uploader sends the request, its job is done until your server responds.

As you mentioned, it may be reasonable to increase the chunk size or make other changes to speed up the chunk combination operation to lessen the chance of a timeout (if #1 or #2 above are not desirable).