[GH-ISSUE #458] Attachment download hangs with Nginx server #443

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opened 2026-02-27 11:11:48 +03:00 by kerem · 4 comments

kerem commented

2026-02-27 11:11:48 +03:00

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Originally created by @tonioo on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/modoboa/modoboa/issues/458

Originally assigned to: @tonioo on GitHub.

Originally created by Miroslav Abrahám on 2013-09-10T17:54:14Z

It always seems to happen that attachments are not downloaded fast enough but they hang for some time and either finish the download or timeout.

There are 2 workarounds for this:

Add "keepalive_timeout = 0;" to your Nginx config file

Comment out line 57 in modoboa/extensions/webmail/views.py as mentioned in issues #473 (may by more of a fix than a workaround)

The reason for this happening seems to be in Nginx that does not like the combination of gzip and keepalive (http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpGzipModule). The Content-Length (line 57) value of a file being sent to a browser is already gzipped while the file size is really bigger. Since they do not match, the download hangs until it reaches a default timeout set in the main nginx.conf file.

As already mentioned in #473, the downside of this is the fact that a user will not know what is the size of the file being downloaded and what is the current progress of the download.

Originally created by @tonioo on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/modoboa/modoboa/issues/458 Originally assigned to: @tonioo on GitHub. **Originally created by Miroslav Abrahám on 2013-09-10T17:54:14Z** It always seems to happen that attachments are not downloaded fast enough but they hang for some time and either finish the download or timeout. There are 2 workarounds for this: # Add "keepalive_timeout = 0;" to your Nginx config file # Comment out line 57 in modoboa/extensions/webmail/views.py as mentioned in issues #473 (may by more of a fix than a workaround) The reason for this happening seems to be in Nginx that does not like the combination of gzip and keepalive (http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpGzipModule). The Content-Length (line 57) value of a file being sent to a browser is already gzipped while the file size is really bigger. Since they do not match, the download hangs until it reaches a default timeout set in the main nginx.conf file. As already mentioned in #473, the downside of this is the fact that a user will not know what is the size of the file being downloaded and what is the current progress of the download.

kerem

2026-02-27 11:11:48 +03:00

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kerem commented

2026-02-27 11:11:49 +03:00

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@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013):

Posted by Miroslav Abrahám on 2013-09-16T11:05:34Z

Or maybe even better then both of the previously mentioned options is the option no. 3: to determine a proper gzipped value
This thread could be helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/957577/serving-gzipped-content-from-django

@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013): **Posted by Miroslav Abrahám on 2013-09-16T11:05:34Z** Or maybe even better then both of the previously mentioned options is the option no. 3: to determine a proper gzipped value This thread could be helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/957577/serving-gzipped-content-from-django

kerem commented

2026-02-27 11:11:49 +03:00

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@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013):

Posted by Antoine Nguyen on 2013-09-17T06:46:53Z

Let the django part compress attachments also means it will load the entire file into memory in order to gzip it... Nginx streams the encoding.

@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013): **Posted by Antoine Nguyen on 2013-09-17T06:46:53Z** Let the django part compress attachments also means it will load the entire file into memory in order to gzip it... Nginx streams the encoding.

kerem commented

2026-02-27 11:11:49 +03:00

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@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013):

Posted by Miroslav Abrahám on 2013-09-17T07:08:03Z

Then maybe this Django snippet http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/365/ could be helpful as the file is not loaded into memory in order to discover it's length.

@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013): **Posted by Miroslav Abrahám on 2013-09-17T07:08:03Z** Then maybe this Django snippet http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/365/ could be helpful as the file is not loaded into memory in order to discover it's length.

kerem commented

2026-02-27 11:11:49 +03:00

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@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013):

Posted by Antoine Nguyen on 2013-09-17T13:05:45Z

Applied in changeset commit:88d755431aa30f74e0c870ae1caea209adaa8780.

@tonioo commented on GitHub (Dec 4, 2013): **Posted by Antoine Nguyen on 2013-09-17T13:05:45Z** Applied in changeset commit:88d755431aa30f74e0c870ae1caea209adaa8780.