oc-2121 - External Storage: Dropbox makes ownCloud stop working for user under certain circumstances.

[msrex]

From http://bugs.owncloud.org/thebuggenie/owncloud/issues/oc-2121
With a still active reporter.

Description:
Recently I added many photos and videos (a total of over 2.5GB) to my dropbox account.

Since then ownCloud stopped working for the user that had connected this dropbox account. Every time this user tries to access his ownCloud account, he gets a server error:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [no address given] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

I set up a new ownCloud installation at a much more powerful server, tried again and the same problem occurs.

Other users can use ownCloud without problems, only the user with the "problematic" dropbox account is affected.

The only messages I see in ownCloud log are like this:

Error files_external Error: (400) Path must not be empty October 22, 2012, 21:36
Error files_external Error: (400) Path must not be empty October 22, 2012, 21:35
Error files_external Error: (400) Path must not be empty October 22, 2012, 21:33

The solution for the affected user, unless he is the administrator, is for the admin to disable temporary the external storage support, let the user log in, enable the external storage support and the user then proceed to remove his dropbox account before browsing his files. If he is the only administrator, then the problem is fatal.

Reproduction steps:
Not sure. Best bet is adding a dropbox account with gigabytes of photos and videos.

[msrex]

There was one comment:

Nov 14, 07:59
I can confirm the behavoir on a 730 MB dropbox. If you need any debugging information, please let me know at torben at nehmer dot net.

[icewind1991]

@MTGap can you have a look at this

[genelatham]

I have this problem, but my dropbox account is small, about 300 MB about 191 jpg files.

[AndryXY]

I think this is the problem: #731 Every image on dropbox will copied in one task, it's on overload in php. Maybe also in gdLib... by the way gdLib makes many problems, like here owncloud-archive/apps#310 . If available on the server imageMagic is the much more better solution for quality and more effective algorithms...

[MTGap]

I can confirm on master that with the gallery app running it will create thumbnails for all images when external storage is mounted. We'll work on a solution.

Some improvements should come with: owncloud-archive/apps#333

[MTGap]

There should also be a significant improvement if you had the files_versions app installed with this: #924

Let me know if the changes in the gallery app and the files_versions app resolve this issue.

[Happyfeet01]

is this error fixed in the new version?

[BernhardPosselt]

@Happyfeet01 please try and report

[j-mie]

I currently have this issue in the stable build. PHP also jumps up to full usage of RAM that is allowed in php,ini and then as soon as it hits it it is terminated and the 500 error is given to the user. I've tried increasing the memory for PHP to around a GB to see if that would make a difference but not really.

[27-Feb-2013 15:42:43] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 523800 bytes) in /www/owncloud/lib/db.php on line 562

[27-Feb-2013 15:46:48] PHP Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 339214336) (tried to allocate 77 bytes) in /www/owncloud/lib/db.php on line 562.

Also getting quite alot of usage from MySQL.

[j-mie]

I think I found a fix. Seems to be caused by not having php5-intl installed. I installed php-intl on my CentOS machine and it brought down PHP RAM usage and stopped the script from 500ing.

[BernhardPosselt]

Cool :) i just read the docs, its required indeed. Doesnt the package in CentOS install this dep? Or did you install it from source?

[BernhardPosselt]

Also are you sure you report this in the same thread? are you using dropbox with owncloud?

[j-mie]

I installed from source as I heard there was an issue with the CentOS package but I diden't check. I had Dropbox working after installing php-intl but it was slowly importing my files so I just uploaded them my self.

[BernhardPosselt]

ok so this report is not related to this issue right?

[j-mie]

They both seem to be the same issue. A 500 error from Apache as soon as you add an import source.
I got the same for Dropbox and Google Drive.

[BernhardPosselt]

I think @msrex has php-intl installed right?

[j-mie]

I just realised @msrex was one of the devs. I was making the assumption that the person who made the ticket was a user and might not of install php-intl. Ooops

EDIT: I think that the bug report is imported from a report at bugs.owncloud.org so the reporter may of not had php-intl installed. They also say it is a new machine.

[tycho]

I'm experiencing this issue as well, regardless of whether or not I've got php-intl. it looks purely like a design issue with the external files Dropbox bits.

Here's an xdebug trace (with rendering thanks to kcachegrind):

Why is it doing all this interaction with the Dropbox API synchronously while the user is sitting there waiting? Ideally it would do all this synchronization work as part of the cron job, and there would be some kind of UI indication that the Dropbox contents are syncing in the background.

[MTGap]

I'm going to close, because all file cache performance issues (which users see as Dropbox issues) should be resolved in ownCloud 5. If not, please create a new issue.

[tycho]

I'm using ownCloud 5.

[MTGap]

Based on that picture, you aren't. OC_Filestorage_Dropbox should be \OC\Files\Storage\Dropbox.

[tycho]

Oops. You're right. I transposed numbers in my head. 4.5, not 5. Derp.

I'll try the latest.

[fukajan]

Just installed the Owncloud 5 release and configured a SFTP mount. The mounted folder contains my complete music library, ~20.000 files, ~ 120 GB. I can open the top-level directory, but as soon as I dive into the directory structure, I get the Internal Server Error. I get the error for a couple of times trying to reload Owncloud, no matter which URL. Finally, after a couple of minutes, it seems to recover. Opening the SFTP mount produces the errer again.

I checked phpinfo() and it tells me that it's compiled with --enable-intl. The intl section tells me:

intl
Internationalization support enabled
version 1.1.0
ICU version 4.2.1

Directive Local Value Master Value
intl.default_locale no value no value
intl.error_level 0 0

No idea if it's a different problem with SFTP. But I also tried another mount with less files that works without problems.

I'd be happy to provide more information, just let me know.

[fukajan]

So no news on this? Would be great if we could verify if this is the same issue or something else.

[MTGap]

Open a new issue @floecksche