Large zip file downloads fail or need several attempts to download successfully

This sort of thing has always been something of an issue. ftp is definitely the safer way to go with big files.
But our club seems to manage bigger downloads than you mention.

Is there anything in your debug log files (wp-content/debug.log) that could explain it?
And do you have enough memory available?
Also, does the problem happen for everyone, or could there possibly be an issue with your own internet connection for big downloads?

Hi Josie,
Cant see debug files in the path you mention.
I’ve also submitted a support ticket with UK2. If they ever answer I’ll ask them to look at memory, as well as time limits if that could be anything to do with it.
Yes, it happens to everybody in similar fashion.
Can’t understand why sometimes “trying again” brings success, unless it’s 70MB or so in which case it’s “…fire off an email to Eugene, can’t get images again”.
Thanks anyway for your usual prompt support. I’ll let you know what UK2 says.

Another thing to check into might be the length of time your host allows a single process to take before it times out. The larger the zip file, the longer it takes to generate.

Hi Josie,
Host claims they’ve upped our limits but only change I can find is max file size 256MB. Time limits still show as 60 seconds. I’ve written back for clarification. Needless to say it’s made no difference. They want us to upgrade to VPS, (for 10 or so files per year).
One thing I do notice is that the EW, once download is initiated, does manage to provide a complete zip file even though the actual download fails.
Another thing is that I’m probably mostly responsible for the whole problem in the first place as I loaded up all our forthcoming seasons forms without adding a max file to the appropriate layout. Unfortunately several eager beavers have already submitted images. Does that mean I can’t retrospectively add a limit as I could screw things up for what’s already there?
Thanks for your consistently ace support, Eugene

Just had this from UK2…

Hello Eugene,
Thank you for contacting UK2.net Support!

I hope you are well, we recommend that you contact the plugin EntryWizard and find out the specific PHP values required. The exact PHP entries will need to be assigned to your domain.

Once you have this information could you please reply with the values and the domain where they need to be located and we can further assist you.

Thank you in advance for your response.
Best regards,
Lynden Gillespie

I’m afraid I’m rather out of my depth here.
Many hosting companies allow you to set these values in your .htaccess file. About all I can tell you is that these are what we set in ours:

php_value max_execution_time 90
php_value max_input_vars 2100
php_value post_max_size 25M
php_value upload_max_filesize 10M

And we do still have to resort to ftp on occasion.

Have you tried downloading in segments? If you have some dropdown field like “category”, download only the images from one category value at a time.

Re changing the max file size in your layout: that could be done at any time. It should not affect already-uploaded files.

Thanks so much for your help Josie. And on a Sunday ??
Will also set limit on image size on layout.
Cheers,
Eugene.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by gene-stevo.

Huge thanks for all your help Josie.
UK2 have made amendments as suggested but to no avail as yet.
Guess it’s just the nature of the beast that is PHP.
Will show selected bods the finery of FileZilla.
Thanks again and best wishes,
Eugene

You are right that a very big zip file may fail for either size or timing. There are two ways round this.
One is to log onto your hosting account and use FTP to recover the files.
The other is to use the list of filenames in the download spreadsheet to automate file copying from the website to a local folder. The web folder is always the WP root folder followed by /wp-content/uploads/ewz_img_uploads/ followed by a folder named as the event code (available via the download spreadsheet) followed by the image filename (available via the download spreadsheet).

Thank you for your response but I think I’ll stick of FileZilla for FTP and show selected few how to use it.
Cheers,
Eugene

Just a thought, perhaps late…sorry, but are u adding that optional prefix? on upload? It’s been a while, but i believe that slowed down my “export”.