FileChucker

Uploader with Progress Bar, File Manager & Multi-User Support

Need to transfer files to/from your website?  FileChucker makes it easy.  Fun, even.  Whether for customer files, or just your own, FileChucker is the solution.
FileChucker Screenshot

Solutions to Problems with CGI Scripts

If you're having trouble running FileChucker or any other CGI script, these fixes may help.

Progress Bar Doesn't Work on Apache:

Some servers perform write-caching which prevents us from writing our status logfile during the upload; it doesn't actually hit the disk until the upload is complete, making it worthless for reporting on progress during the upload.

On every Apache server where we've seen this problem (which is less than 10) of the progress bar not working even though the upload completes successfully, there has been a simple solution: create a file called .htaccess (that's a period followed by "htaccess") either in the directory where the FileChucker CGI script is at, or in some directory above it (like your server's DOCUMENT_ROOT, i.e. the top-level of your webspace).  Then put these lines into that file:

<IfModule mod_security.c>
	# Turn off mod_security filtering.
	SecFilterEngine Off

	# The below probably isn't needed,
	# but better safe than sorry.
	SecFilterScanPOST Off
</IfModule>

If that doesn't work, try it without the 2 IfModule lines.

Problems on Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS):

I think any of your poor users who are forced to do this on the abomination that is IIS might find this useful:

Two things, the IIS 6 metabase has a cgi timeout value that needs to be bumped way up (defaults to 300 seconds; way too short)

The script errors seem to be related to loading a cached copy of the page and/or IE security settings

Also, there is a registry entry in windows 2003 that fixes the write cache issue:

DisableMemoryCache
Registry Path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\InetInfo\Parameters

Data Type: REG_DWORD
Default Value: 0 (disabled)
Range: 0 - 1
Disables server caching.

And I found that setting content expiration to immediate AND doing a manual refresh helps to make sure the log file is written correctly if I do another upload after one completed, I think putting in a meta refresh at the top of the html might help that as well........

-- Anonymous

Progress Bar Doesn't Work on OS X Server:

If you're running OS X Server and the progress bar isn't working, it could be because of "performance cache."  Apparently if ANY of your hosted sites are using the OS X performance cache, then by default, all sites (domains) will attempt to.  The fix then is to disable the performance caching on all hosted sites, using the OS X Server Admin tools/settings.

FileChucker Doesn't Run on OS X Server:

Around line 30 you'll see:

$ENV{PATH}='/bin:/usr/bin';

Some OS X Server users may need to change the single-quotes to double-quotes on that line.  Thanks to Cameron Mitchell & Raoul Callaghan for the tip.

IE Problems when Server is Apache+SSL:

I examined the headers of the server Responses and found out, that the ones from your installation were slightly different to ours.

Yours:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 10:32:39 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=98
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/xml
Ours:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 10:27:11 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.53 (Linux/SUSE)
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/xml

In our case IE kept updating the website several times and then stalled. The tool HttpLook made it obvious that no requests were sent by IE any more - obviously because of caching. The trouble is the line "Connection: Keep-Alive". Adding this in Perl did not help, it resulted in the header being sent as "Connection: Keep-Alive, close".

Forums suggest that IE does not work with KeepAlive-connections from SSL-Servers very well. Because of that it is disabled in all standard installations of Apache with SSL. Since we need to protect our uploads, we have to let the cgi run via ssl.

My solution was to allow the KeepAlive-connection for our script only.

The crucial file in our case was vhost_ssl.conf. It's first line had been:

SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

Changing it as follows solved the problem:

<FilesMatch "[^(filechucker\.cgi)]">
  SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 </FilesMatch>

I did not encounter any problems with SSL on IE so far but of course I can't be sure about that until more customers with different versions of IE have tested our upload.

-- Till Pape

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Client Quotes

Thanks again for a great product and great support - beyond expectations.
– Greg S.
FileChucker is a great drop-in solution for file uploads, and worth every penny of its very reasonable cost.  Encodable's support is excellent to boot.
– Loren A.
I want to thank you for your efforts on Userbase. It has become an integral part of our business and has allowed us to branch out and begin using automation on a lot of our processes. Userbase has become the gateway to advancement for our company's processes for our clients and employees.
I looked all over trying to find a simple cgi script.  I found that FileChucker was by far the best.  If you have issues with your hosting service's php.ini max upload size then this is the way to go.  Looking forward to future enhancements.
– Bob C.
The work, the thought and the organization you put into this app is incredible.
– Bruce C.
Our members think your software is fantastic...  I would recommend your software and your company to anyone.  Thanks for all your help.  It has been a pleasure dealing with you.
– Tommy A.
FileChucker is working great...  Clients love it.  Vendors love it.  We love it.
– Gerry W.
Why didn't I just do this from the get-go?  So much easier.  Thanks for your work.  FileChucker makes my work easier.
– Dominic M.
The amount of customization in the program is incredible.  I was able to integrate it into my existing page layout relatively simply.  I was also able to easily customize the look/feel to match the current site.
– Jason M.
Do you know how rare it is to have a "canned" shopping cart that can easily do complex pricing options on a single item?  Basically, they don't exist!  I have looked.  Everywhere!  And the few that might even come close to CornerStore's functionality cost a fortune!
– Tashina P.
I just wanted to say that yours is the first product that I've tested so far that hasn't failed on handling uploads.  This is going to work for a print company, so they are handling nothing but large files and all the other solutions I've tried so far have not been reliable.  So far yours has been 100% successful in my tests.
– Kevin H.
Just one word: Fantastic.  10-minute job to plug FileChucker into my app, and it now works a treat.  It's through the hard work by people like yourselves that make my job so much easier.  Congratulations on an outstanding product... Many many thanks.
– Sean F.
I just installed the demo of your product and got it up and running in no time.  I searched high and low for a decent login script and thank God I found yours.
– Adrian F.
Thank you VERY much for all of your help.  You've really impressed me.  We have support agreements for other software that costs thousands of dollars / year (just for the support), and most of them aren't as helpful as you have been.
– Keith Y.
FileChucker is helping drive the backend of several high profile entertainment sites for people like Shania Twain and Dolly Parton.  We're also using it to drive backend file uploads for a multi-billion dollar banking institution.  It's a great product.  We've tried other "chucking" upload solutions with progress bars using flash and php, but nothing works as reliably as FileChucker.
– Michael W.
Nice script, it's saving the day on our project.
– Aaron W.
I just want to say you guys really stand alone in that you have a quality product and you provide genuine customer service.  It's sad but those qualities are seldom found separately, much less together.  Thanks again for your time and help.
– Alex S.
You've done a wonderful job with FileChucker and UserBase, and they have made a big difference to how our website runs.
– Nicholas H.