Apache2: upload restarts over and over

Question

We are using different upload scripts with Perl-Module CGI for our CMS and have not encountered such a problem for years.

Our customer's employees are not able to get a successful download. No matter what kind or size of file, no matter which browser they use, no matter if they do it at work or log in from home. If they try to use one of our system's upload pages the following happens: The reload seems to work till approx. 94% are downloaded. Suddenly, the reload restarts and the same procedure happens over and over again.

A look in the error log shows this:

Apache2::RequestIO::read: (70007) The timeout specified has expired at (eval 207) line 5

The wierd thing is if i log in our customer's system using our VPN-Tunnel i never can reproduce the error (i can from home though). I have googled without much success. I checked the apache timeout setting which was at 300 seconds - which is more than generous. I even checked the content length field for a value of 0 because i found a forum entry refering to a CGI bug that related to a content length field of 0.

Now, i am really stuck and running out of ideas. Can you give me some new ones, please?

The apache server is version 2.2.16, the perl CGI module is version 3.43 . We are using mod_perl.

Answer 1

We did know our customer didn't use any kind of load balancing. Without letting anyone else know our customers infrastructure departement activated a load balancer. This way requests went to different servers and timed out.