Topic: Epiware, Squid and SME

[David Oxilia]

Hi,

does anyone have experience installing Epiware (epiware.com) on
e-smith servers? I've installed this software on a v5.6 server without
complications however, there is an issue when uploading files to
the server from some web clients and locations. In short, the server
doesn't allow users to upload files > 1M in size.

Most of epiware is written in PHP and therefore files such as php.ini
need to be properly configured to work with epiware but even after this is
done, large uploads are still unattainable. I've been hinted that the
problem lies in Squid which I don't have enabled but processes
are none the less running. Anyone have any suggestions on how
to configure Squid to allow large file uploads or to disable this
limitation all together?

Thanks, David.

P.S. These are the Squid processes running:

root      2384  0.0  0.2  3848 1044 ?        S    Feb19   0:00 squid -D
squid     2386  0.0  0.8  6188 4228 ?        S    Feb19   0:00 (squid) -D
squid     2420  0.0  0.0  1332  296 ?        S    Feb19   0:00 (unlinkd)

[Bill Talcott]

Have you changed the PHP max upload size?

http://www.e-smith.org/faq.php3#8q36

[David Oxilia]

Yup,

all php.ini parameters are set to allow 50M file uploads. I believe
that PHP is not the issue here but rather Squid. I'm not familiar
with Squid but I believe there are settings that take precedence
over PHP that would prevent >1M file uploads. This appears to
be confirmed by Squid forums. This limitation has apparently
been removed in Squid 2.5. SME 5.6 runs Squid v2.4 Stable6
which by default has 1M file upload limits set. The problems is
that I can't see in any squid.conf files where this variable may
be set. Also, I'm unsure why I'm running Squid processes if
I've opted not to cache pages in my SME setup. Finally, I'm
not sure if squid.conf files are read in a non-squid SME setup

David.

[ryan]

How about the time out period in php.ini?  You should allow LOTS of time if remote users are on dial up.

[Bill]

Did you try

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/dmay/mitel/howto/webmail-attachment-size-howto.html


Bill

[David Oxilia]

Ok,

here's what I have discovered. The issue is NOT PHP. This is all
setup to allow the transfers I intend. HOWEVER, I have noticed
that network address translation (NAT) in a server and gateway
mode SME DOES NOT WORK without a Squid process
running! That is, regardless of whether you choose to cache
pages, Squid must be running for your client browsers to work.
Try it. Kill your squid processes:

> squid -k shutdown

root     10737  0.0  1.0  3792  996 ?        S    15:00   0:00 squid -s -D
squid    10738  4.3  5.4  7280 5328 ?        S    15:00   0:00 (squid) -s -D
squid    10739  0.0  0.3  1384  308 ?        S    15:00   0:00 (unlinkd)

and web pages will no longer be viewable.

Start it up again:

> squid -s -D

(I chose to enable loggin with -s to see what's going on) and browsing
comes back online.

Now... there are variables in squid.conf.default that need to be set
and read in order to allow POSTS larger than 1M (line 760 on SME
5.5):

#request_body_max_size 1 MB

The question is does this file get parsed at process startup...

Anyone Squid knowledgable?

David.

[David Oxilia]

Ha! I knew it was Squid that was wrapping things up. So here's
the solution. Versions of Squid < 2.5 by default set the maximum
HTTP post size to 1M. Squid 2.5 (and presumably beyond) set
it to 0M which means, unlimited.

If you want to post using a PHP form and are routing through an
SME server (at least up to v5.6), you therefore need to set the
following variable in your /etc/squid/squid.conf (the default
configuration file when squid starts up):

request_body_max_size 0 MB

then you must restart squid:

> squid -k shutdown; squid -s -D

This of course needs to be done on your routing SME server not on
the server on which you might be uploading files. If you are posting
without going through a web caching process, the above does not
apply.

Thanks for your input. David.