[resolved] Attachments unable to open after download. (0kb in file)

swoods666

Good morning

I have installed from fresh and am getting some issues with attachments on the filesystem. System details attached.

The tickets are being created by email. The attachment shows and can be downloaded. The file that downloads is empty (0kb). I can go into the folder on the server and locate the file. This will download and when the correct file type ending is added they open correctly.
The permissions on the files stored on the filesystem look incorrect but I am not sure. (picture 2). I have chowned and chmoded the files and directories (attachments folder is in the html root folder). This does not seem to enable the attachment to download correctly.

When the attachments are moved to the filesystem they are added as owner nobody:nobody with folder permission 1355. The file in the folder is nobody:nobody and file permission 0644.

The error log shows the following during the attempted download.

I would guess that I am missing some config in php?

Thanks for any assistance.

RBGE

swoods666 This was a known issue in 1.14 - if you upgrade to 1.14.1 it should be fixed.

Also, while unrelated to this problem:

swoods666 I found I had added the email cron task as nobody. Would this need to run as www-data or nobody as was the guide I used for installation?

I'm sure people are getting fed up with me saying this, but nowhere other than osTicket documentation have I ever seen the username specified in the middle of a cron job. What works for me is:

sudo crontab -e -u www-data (this edits the crontab for the www-data user)

*/2 * * * * php /var/www/html/api/cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1

I know some people prefer using the full path for php, and that's fine

ntozier

PHP uploads files to its temporary folder first. It then moves them to where on the file system that they belong.

A few years back now I noticed a similar issue in my setup where the file permissions were being inherited from the temp folder, (granted this was under IIS not Apache) but it makes me think that the symptom is that your file permissions have an issue.

So I would first check the php temp folder to make sure that the apache process owner (the user it runs as) can write files to it. Then I would check the location where the files are being moved to do the same.

swoods666

Hi, thank you for your guidance.

I looked in the apache php config file and tmp folder was not set(commented out).

To test I adjusted the owner and permissions of the /var/tmp folder. This enabled me to upload an attachment to a reply which I had not previously tested or realised was not working.

The attachment taken from the inbound emails is still the same. I would think what you are saying is still the case but I am not sure the mechanism for the files coming from an inbound email creating a ticket.
Would they be in a different tmp folder before transferring to the attachments?

I tested adding an image to an internal note and then downloading which worked fine.

Thanks

swoods666

I found I had added the email cron task as nobody. Would this need to run as www-data or nobody as was the guide I used for installation? I changed this to www-data but the files from email still no content (0kb).

Thanks

ntozier

@RBGE

Here is my understanding (which maybe is outdated at this juncture of the space time continuum).
see: https://linuxize.com/post/scheduling-cron-jobs-with-crontab/
There are two types of crontab files: System-wide and individual user. I've heard Individual user also referred to as Basic Cron. The system-wide crontab file use a slightly different user than crontabs. It contains a mandatory user field that specifies which user the job will run as. Individual (or Basic) do not need a username like stated in the docs since they already run as an specific user.

RBGE

ntozier Ah, indeed... and sure enough, it does actually say that in the documentation 🤦‍♂️ I'll stick with the assertion that using the crontab command is better than editing the system crontab though 😉

ntozier

@RBGE I totally agree with you on that. 🙂

swoods666

A big thank you to both @ntozier & @RBGE, with your help the system is fully up and running. The upgrade to 14.1 has rectified the attachment issue from the inbound emails and the permissions on the /tmp/ folder has sorted the attachments going on to replies/internal notes.

Many thanks 😀

ntozier

/High5s @RBGE

@swoods666 Glad to hear that you got this all sorted out. I'll mark this thread as resolved and close the thread. Please do not hesitate to open a new thread if you have another question, comment, etc.