503 Backend Fetch

[Londo]

Hello,

After upgrading from a version of Phoca Download that was probably about 1.5 years old, as well as upgrading Joomla, I now get the following error whenever someone tries to download a file.

Error 503 Backend fetch failed
Backend fetch failed
Guru Meditation:
XID: 48415658
Varnish cache server

All of the files and folders are displayed correctly, it is only at the very last step when they user clicks on the download button does the error occur.

Any suggestions?

[Benno]

Hi,

After upgrading from a version of Phoca Download that was probably about 1.5 years old, as well as upgrading Joomla,

So, it was a migration from j2.5.28 to j3.4.8
did you follow this guide step by step? https://www.phoca.cz/documents/50-phoca/ ... o-joomla-3

Kind regards,
Benno

[Londo]

No, it was a a migration from (I think) Joomla, 3.1.x to 3.4.8. It was certainly a 3.x series Joomla, in any case.

[Londo]

Some more investigation and conversation with my webhost. The host does, indeed, use a Varnish server to cache the data. Why it's not working is not clear. The host suggested that I change the file link such that it bypassed Varnish, but it's not clear how to do that without editing Phoca Download--not something I'm inclined to do.

Furthermore, I discovered that some, but not all of my files exhibit this behavior. Specifically, those files with links (from the download button) like

http://<URL>/main/index.php/path/path/file

were broken, while those with a link like

http://<URL>/main/index.php/path/path/category/5-lecture1?download=15:hw1

seem to work. The later URLs do not require one to agree with a license, while the former do. I'm not positive that this explains the difference in the URL format, but it seems likely.

Finally, by changing the "Direct Link" file option in Phoca Download to "Yes", I was able to get the broken files to download. I couldn't figure out what that did to the download button URL as I couldn't get it to display anywhere, but my browser did start downloading the file. I'm not sure why this worked, and it seems possible that I've uncovered some conflict in an edge case between, what... the latest version of Phoca Download and Varnish?

In any case, my system is working for the moment.

[Jan]

Hi, unfortunately, regarding Varnish/server/cache - I cannot give any clue advice as I don't have any experiences with such functions/features on the server

Jan