"Could not create paste: server error or not responding" Error when Attaching Files

[gh2023-aesun]

Describe the problem/question

I’m running PrivateBin Version: v1.7.8 installed in a Proxmox LXC using a Proxmox Helper Script.

I can successfully upload pdf files to a paste if the size of the pdf is less than ~500KiB, but if I try with a 900Kib+ pdf it fails with the following message:

I can successfully create pastes without any file uploads and for pastes with smaller file uploads.

I've tried editing the config file (/opt/privatebin/cfg/conf.php) to increase the sizelimit to 1GiB.  The only two changes I have made to the config file are:

...
sizelimit = 1073741824
...
fileupload = true
...

Also, if i runjournalctl -fwhile the paste fails, there are no log entries made during the failure.

I'm not sure what web server is running, so I tried finding the PHP error logs using:

root@privatebin:~# lsof | grep log | grep php
php-fpm8. 149            root  mem       REG                7,3    14392    149752 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libabsl_raw_logging_internal.so.20220623.0.0
php-fpm8. 149            root    2w      REG                7,3     2158      2505 /var/log/php8.2-fpm.log
php-fpm8. 149            root    5w      REG                7,3     2158      2505 /var/log/php8.2-fpm.log
php-fpm8. 209        www-data  mem       REG                7,3    14392    149752 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libabsl_raw_logging_internal.so.20220623.0.0
php-fpm8. 210        www-data  mem       REG                7,3    14392    149752 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libabsl_raw_logging_internal.so.20220623.0.0

But neither of these files contain any error messages during the failure.

It looks like a timeout or a size limit issue, but I'm out of ideas.

Any thoughts?

Did you use the FAQ section?

• Yes, I have read the FAQ and I found no solution/answer there.

What you did?

In the Web GUI:

• Enter text in Editor Box
• Attach a file / Choose Files > select a file ~1KiB
• Click the Create buttion

What happens

The error messge is displayed:

What should happen

Green box with a Copy Link button.

Additional information

No response

Server address

self hosted

Server OS

Debian 12

Webserver

No response

PrivateBin version

v1.7.8

Browser and version

Firefox, Brave, LibreWolf

Local operating system and version

Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS

Issue reproducibility

Yes, reproducible on https://privatebin.net.

[elrido]

See the diagram in https://github.com/PrivateBin/PrivateBin/wiki/Configuration#sizelimit - its not just PHP and it's POST and memory limits at play, but also the webserver settings for the maximum POST sizes, etc.

This script, which is not maintained by us, seems to use nginx. In nginx you need to change the client_max_body_size setting, it's default is only 1 MiB, which matches the issue you encounter.

Raising it to 1 GiB is definitely a bad idea, since your instance, according to the script, is limited to 1 GiB of RAM and in PHP on the server side the paste will get loaded into memory at least twice, once to parse and validate the JSON and to check if the payload is valid base64 and doesn't compress (which indicates it contains encrypted data). So to upload a single paste of 1 GiB at a time the PHP memory limit needs to be 2-3 GiB per request. And if you run multiple php-fpm processes you'd need to multiply that by the number of workers.

[gh2023-aesun]

Thank you for your swift reply.

I did a little more reseach and made the following changes to the nginx .ini file (/etc/php/8.2/fpm/php.ini):

client_max_body_size = 10M
upload_max_filesize = 10M
post_max_size = 10M

On restarting the LXC container, the problem was resolved.

I only raised the limit to 1GiB to eliminate that as the issue, so it's back to a normal value now.

Thank you for your help and educating me on the size limits work.