Difficulties Loading Images

Note: when this occures, no Error is left on the Error Log.

How is the server (CPU/MEM), network utilization.

Try to monitor via Window Task manager (at least on NT or Win2K this is what it is called -- not that familiar with XP), and try to load that same image. At the same time, try to want the processes utilization on the server.  Another thing to look for would be the physical memory, and cache.  When the server starts swapping, performace will dramatically drop. Which would have cause the timeout.

Btw, does this happens on remote pc, or on the server console itself?

it happens on all computers we try, including the server. Give a bit to look into the other things.

hmmm, physical memory seems to be fine (only 10% in use), and we found no change when we increased the timeout 1000%.

When I request a page from our server, the servers physical memory doesn't change, and the CPU uses for about a second goes from 10% to 35%, doesn't seem to matter whether or not the perticulare site doesn't show the pic or half loads it or anything.

I can tell this will be a difficult question, so I'm upping the anty 50%

UP front, I would have to say that I do not have any experience in working with Apache+XP+ColdFusion.  But together we might narrow down the possibilities.

Is it possible to just load the images directly, without getting ColdFusion to handle it?  You can do this by, by creating a directory, for example C:\Test

And in your httpd.conf (Most likely to be found in C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\conf folder).  For apache2, it will be Apache2\conf folder).  After that restart the server.

   Alias /test/ "C:/Test/"

   <Directory "C:/Test">
       Options Indexes MultiViews
       AllowOverride None
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>

Copy some of the images that is not loaded well, and try to browse to that page, ie. http://your-server/test/

If the page still breaks, we are looking at apache+os now.  If it looks Ok, maybe ColdFusion is our next target to look at.

give it a try first.

I'm not thinking Cold Fusion is the problem do to the fact that we have Apache set to only use it with extentions .cfm and .dbm (don't ask me why we have .dbm). But being a newbie myself I tried taking the cold fusion modual out of the httpd.conf completely, and the symtoms stayed the same. So it looks to be the Apache-OS configuration.

Also if it helps whenever we restart or stop then start apache, (despite whether or not we've changed any of the configurations) Apache stops serving all webPages untill we restart the computer (we really don't mind this too much, but do these symtops sound related)?

I also found this
<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?q=apache+image&start=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&selm=8D635728Dwilliam.simeon.colum%40ncrnews.daytonoh.ncr.com&rnum=15">link</a> on the web but can't make any sence out of what the guy said the solution was, does that make sence to you?

What version of Apache are you runnning?

Basically the what the docs (from the URL that you gave), gives some suggestion that maybe the communication between the Apache and the web client is somehow not-so-good, which causes the images (or I would presume large data), to break.  Looking at the date, 1999/02/04, it's pretty outdated.  And the solution that Bill gave is based on his experience with a very old platform.

If you need to recompile apache on your platform, it would be even more complicated.  If there is due to some bug, I believe it must have been fixed during these 3 years duration.  Again, check you apache version.

I might suspect that you are correct that we need to look at Apache first.

Please, do you try my suggestion, to "really" sure that image loading is the problem.  Once we are sure, we could move on.

The reason I am insisting is that I used to have some problem with CGI, where the image does not get refresh.  But it is the CGI problem, and not the images loading problem.
 

can you see the full image if you specify the path as URL in the browser directly ?

no, I can't, the image will randomly when you refresh a lot of times give part of the image, or the full image, though when its giving just part of the image, its usually not the same amount.

do you get the images with a browser on the server directly?
can you get the image using the wget command?

the version of apache is 2.0.36

I tried the idea with using the test folder and trying to directly get the image, and unfortunently the same problem occures in that the larger images don't show up.

I can browse the server fine to get the images. Though I don't know what the wget command is.

wget is a unix tool to mirror a website, or better to fetch certain files from a website.  Since you are running Windows, you might need to grab a copy of wget binaries for Win32 (if you are interested).  

I would have suspected that the reason why ahoffman request you to test with wwget is to see how the retreival goes thru.  Sometimes it's not the server that mis-behave, web (http) client do produce unexpected result.

Have you tried to use different browser instead.

Instead of using wget, could use ab.exe (look in c:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\bin folder).  I can't recall the exact switch to use, but try an image that you know load halfway, and try to adjust the timeout, or retry figure for ab command (ab stands for Apache Benchmark).

Another suggestion - I really hate to say this.  Maybe you could try to grab Apache 1.3.24, and test.  I would install in a separate directory, and should work concurrently with Apache 2.0.26.  Just make sure they don't fight for port 80/TCP.  Shutdown one to test the other, or get them to listen to different port.

samri, thanks for writing huge explantions (of my simple words ;-)
CFJNMH, could you please answer my questions.
here are the more detailed ones, to be answered yes or no:
  - do you get the huge images with any browser on the server directly?
  - do you get the small images with a browser on the server directly?
  - can you get the huge image using the wget (or ab.exe, or lynx, or arachne, or whatever commandline tool) command?

-can't get the huge images
-can get the small ones
-boss won't let me install wget

-Hopefully I can try the Apache 1.3, but still descussing it.
-Different browsers don't make a difference (or at least Netscape doesn't)
-and changing the timeout doesn't seem to help either :(

Hmm... I'm not sure where the discussion would end-up with.

It looks like (to me) the problem is with Apache+WinXP.  
I have ran Apache 1.3.24 and 2.0.35 on Win2K, and doesn't seems to have any problem with images 200kb+.  How big is your "big" image anyway.

and I belive we are still missing the method that you use to derive the answer to the latest ahoffman's request.

ok, good news, my boss desided we'd install Win2K, the big files are around 17 KB +
apparently its not just images, its anything, including .html file, (Yet for some reason, if I use ColdFusion to generate a 1 MB page, it works fine, cold fusion being completely server side) so I don't know whats going on.

But, we're going to Win2k, so hopefully all will be well.

The proposition is solely to isolate the problematic component, and not to solve the problem.  If Win2K+Apache 2.0.36 works, we could isolate the OS.  But still the machine hardware+Software, networking component would still be contributor to the while thing.

When you mentioned ColdFusiong is generating the files, the files are still considered static (physical to the FS prior to sending them to the web browser), and should be no different to those of static file.

we will wait to what the result on Win2K.

> -boss won't let me install wget
and no ab.exe or lynx.exe, then the boss should answer your question and solve the problem ;-)

:)

ahoffman, that is always the problem in big organization.  been there. :(

However, ab.exe is part of Apache2 distribution (at least on Win32 version).


CFJNMH, Any luck?

Have you tried playing with your MTU settings at all?  

Just a thought after skimming the above.

Cheers,
-Jon

Well, still haven't gotten around to installing Win2k, lol. Actually we're a very small company. There's me, my boss, his partner... and one other part time programmer. So it always takes awhile to get these things done.

Hmmmm, I'm not sure what MTU settings are.

This is off topic, but you guys wouldn't happen to know how to convince windows XP to install a previous version of Windows would you?

-Ok, 1.3.x had the same symptoms, yesterday me and my boss finally broke down and desided to reinstall Windows XP (fresh install). And now everythings magicly working again, lol. Thanks for all your help Samri :-) .

sure.

it's great to know that some of my ideas do "work" :)

take care.

Did you get a chance to check the MTUs before re-installing.

Cheers,
-Jon

TC,

I would have a feeling that your suggestion might work.  Personally I have no idea on where to look for to tweak the MTU setting.

Maybe you could help to provide the MTU setting registry key that needs to be tweaked.

cheers