Photo Upload Not Working Well

[Mark EasingwoodParticipant @markeasingwood33578]

I Just up-loaded some photo’s into the  “Aircraft General Discussion Thread”, first one up-loaded ok next two kept being refused.

All three photo’s are JPEG’s of no more than 3.9Mb, 8Mb is supposed to be the maximum allowed. The only way I could get them to upload was to keep shrinking them in Photoshop, until they uploaded.

Anyone else have this problem.

Mark.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Three here all about 2.8MB and seem to have upload OK

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Just looked at the plane thread. Your last two images are not showing but I expect they show for you. Quite likely they will appear on the forum in a day or so. It’s an ongoing issue that crops up every so often.

Where the two images added as an edit? As I have a feeling that is when the problem seems to occur.

[Mark EasingwoodParticipant @markeasingwood33578]

Hello Jason,

yes the second two were added as an edit, but only because they kept being refused in the first instance.

I had to open them in Photoshop, re-size, save and try again to up-load a couple of times before the  second two were accepted, and they are showing for me.

Mark.

[Mark EasingwoodParticipant @markeasingwood33578]

Well I just tried to up-load the 2nd of the Vulcan pictures here, it is 3.88Mb, and it was refused.

Perhaps the limit is 3MB mot 8Mb as indicated below;

 

Mark.

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

3.74MB

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, is it possible that your internet speed is too low for large files, and the system times out, as I have found this problem, so I keep my photos below 1.5 to 2MB, and they seem to always load OK.

Regards Nick.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

lincolnMiller.jpg  7.3Mb

 

I’m sure others are having real problems with a couple of intermittent bugs in the image upload system, and have dug into it in so far as a moderator has access to the forum innards without success.   Unfortunately I can’t replicate the problem, which makes it impossible for me to report the bug adequately.

Everyone assumes the bug is in the forum, and it might well be, but could also be due to network issues or something adrift in the users computer.    Nick mentions time-outs due to slow network speed, and the old forum was extremely sensitive to this.   The new one less so, but slow networking remains a possible cause.

Be useful to know:

• file type and size.
• Where uploaded from, internet or PC
• Typical internet speed.
• PC model, operating system and version
• Browser and version

I’ve had bother downloading jpg images from the internet that turned out to be jpg inside webp.   The forum won’t load webp directly – members have to extract the contents and send the saved as jpg.  Webp seems to becoming common.

A related bug, may be entire posts disappearing only to return later.   This, and missing images, could be a cache problem.

Whatever the cause, it’s annoying!

Dave

 

 

[Mark EasingwoodParticipant @markeasingwood33578]

Ok Dave,

That last failed file was a jpeg, from laptop harddrive (desktop), 3.88Mb, my own photo, it has been throuhgh Photoshop in the past, saved as a jpeg.

HP Spectre Laptop, Windows 10 with all updates, current version of Firefox (129.0.2 (64-bit) ). Just done a speed check as below.

Up-load box goes to 100%, then blank for a second or two, then to fail box as in my post above.

 

 

Mark.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Thanks Mark.

Your computer, OS, and browser are all good – therefore unlikely to be the problem.

The network is suspect though.   6mbps is the speed that caused trouble for me uploading images to the old forum making it advisable to reduce size before sending. Upgrading to a 60mbps service fixed it.   Not proved though!

I might be able to simulate a slow network tomorrow and will report back if that causes image fails.

Dave

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

That is quite slow, I’m showing an upload speed of 15 at the moment which is a lot more than 0.75.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

If anyone wants to try a simple speed-check on their system, I can recommend this:

https://fast.com/en/gb/

MichaelG.

.

It is ‘powered by NETFLIX’ and the technical details are briefly explained via the ? button … with much more available in a hyperlinked blog post.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I use the Google one, as it gives upload speed that is more relevant when uploading images etc. Can’t really use Download speed as an indicator of what the upload speed may be , Mine is 1/3rd but Mark’s is only 1/8th.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

You’ve shown me yours, Jason … so I better show you mine

MichaelG.

.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Ah, needed the “show more” button to see the upload. Guess I was not Fast enough to spot that early in the morning.

Though it does cast some doubt on whether upload speed has anything to do with the problem, Michael has suffered with images not loading and although speeds can vary during the day with a speed that fast I would doubt it is going to drop to single figures.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Those are some pretty impressive upload speeds. Back in the day I specified 10:1 ratio target for the UK cable network though some places could only manage 20:1. We had limitations due to the modulation technique and DOCSIS 2 only using the bottom 110MHz of the frequency range. (early systems were less than half that) The early proposals didn’t realise people would create bulk content themselves so it was designed for download capacity with only little requests and acknowledgements going upstream. They certainly never expected every photo snap to be >16Mpixels.

Other relevant information might be location town/country and ISP, time of day (school kids arriving home hammer the network).

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Bazyle

Just for info.

Mine was checked on the iPad, Wi-Fi connected to the Router [with a brick wall, and ‘stuff’ between them] …

Full Fibre To The Premises of course.

Isn’t Technology wonderful, when it works !?!

MichaelG.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Throttling network speed is theoretically straightforward in linux, made even easier with a utility called wondershaper.   Unfortunately, in line with the golden rule ‘nothing is ever easy’,   wondershaper fails on Ubuntu, and none of the fixes I tried work.   However, wondershaper is a front-end to the ‘tc’ utiitity (traffic control), and this tc command worked:

sudo tc qdisc add dev enp4s0 root tbf rate 1000kbit burst 16kbit latency 50mS

This magic incantation means “to device enp4s0 (my ethernet network connection), add a traffic block filter that limits the maximum upload speed to 1megabits per second, with a 16kbits per second burst, and 50mS of latency (network delay).    The effect can be seen in this speedtest, where my download is just under 50Mbits/s but my upload speed is reduced from 10Mbits/s to 0.9.

When sending images to the forim, it’s the upload speed that matters, and on an asynchronous service upload is about 20% of the download speed.

My next post will contain a 7Mb image.   Not putting it this one in case my slow network mangles everything and I have to retype it.

Dave

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Right, previous post worked ok, let’s see if anything gags on this 7.3Mb photo:

 

 

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Shows OK for me

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

OK at 1000kbits/s second, this is 250kbits/s

 

That took about 4 minutes to load, but nothing timed out.  I’ve failed to prove that a slow network connection causes this bug.

Another possibility is that the forum only times-out slow connections out when it’s busy, and I got away with this because it’s quiet at the moment.   Dumping slow-coaches allows many more customers to be serviced, which is less upsetting for the majority than forcing them to wait in a long queue caused by an individual with clunky equipment.   Just a guess, but the forum prioritising when busy might explain why uploading isn’t completely reliable.

Dave

 

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

I see Jason confirms seeing the test images correctly, and so am I.   Anyone else having any bother please say so.

To finish off if anyone wants to play with traffic control themselves, network device is identified with the ifconfig command.  Also, the changes made by tc are per session, and turned off by logging out or rebooting.   They can also be disabled inside the session by deleting the qdisc  (queue discipline) object thus:

sudo tc qdisc del dev enp4s0 root

I believe qdisc controls stack and remain active, so typing

sudo tc qdisc add dev enp4s0 root tbf rate 250kbit burst 16kbit latency 50mS
sudo tc qdisc add dev enp4s0 root tbf rate 1000kbit burst 16kbit latency 50mS

doesn’t increase speed to 1000kbit/s because the earlier 250kbit control is still running.   You have to kill it explicity:

sudo tc qdisc add dev enp4s0 root tbf rate 250kbit burst 16kbit latency 50mS  # Add 250kb qdisc filter device enp4s0
sudo tc qdisc del dev enp4s0 root         # remove all qdisc filters from device enp4s0
sudo tc qdisc add dev enp4s0 root tbf rate 1000kbit burst 16kbit latency 50mS

Dave

 

 

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

I too can see the lathe (oops Lincoln miller) floating in space.

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, so I tried MichaelG’s link fairly early this morning, and got this result.

I tested it again about mid morning, and got this result.

I then did a test using Google, a little after 2pm, and got this result.

I did similar tests on a couple of other laptops, which are newer than this one, and very similar results were seen.

So how about a 4MB picture of a nice old Colchester Mastiff lathe, which took about two minute to load, with. with about a 20 second pause half way through the upload ( Sorry to those who don’t like industrial machines on here)

Regards Nick.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Just to add to the confusion, Nick … I saved your picture and then looked at the ‘info’ which only declares it as being 148kb

Methinks a lot of the delays might be in the forum software reprocessing images !!

MichaelG.

.

Too clever for me … but perhaps Dave could experiment.

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