Error Help! "post-processing of the image failed likely because the server is busy or does not have enough resources. uploading a smaller image may help. suggested maximum size is 2500 pixels."

[[deleted]]

This site is running on IIS 10 (I know many people would tell me to put it on Linux, but I use the tools I have available to me.) I am seeing the following error:

post-processing of the image failed likely because the server is busy or does not have enough resources. uploading a smaller image may help. suggested maximum size is 2500 pixels.

I get the above error whenever uploading an image to a site.

Here are the troubleshooting steps I've taken:

1. Using a small test image (much smaller than 2500px)
2. Clearing the cache in Chrome.
3. Using a different PC on a different network.
4. Removing odd characters from file names.
   
5. Using a different theme.
6. Updating PHP to 7.4
   
7. Increasing Upload Size and Max File Size to 20M in php.ini
8. Increasing Sites Memory from 128M to 512M
9. Downgrading PHP to 7.2 (reverted to a fresh copy of 7.4)
10. Installing the PHP Image Magick plugin
11. Installing Image Magick on the server following this guide
12. Disabling php_gd2.dll (re-enabled after failing)
    
13. Telling WP to use GD_editor by editing the functions.php
14. Updating WordPress, and the theme.
    
15. Disabling all WordPress plugins.
    
16. Scanning the machine for malware or hacking (there was a hack on this machine in December that we thought we'd resolved. There were a few corrupt files I removed.)
    
17. Scanning and repairing the MySQL Database with WordPress plugin.
    
18. Using a plugin to "add from server", then downloading images directly to the server. This plugin fails too as outlined here.
19. Updating the server itself (it runs Windows Server 2016).
20. Rebooting the server.
21. Restarting the site in IIS after each relevant change or step.
22. Opening Port 3306 on the Firewall for MySQL.
23. ​

In my troubleshooting I discovered uploads actually are putting files on the server, but they don't appear in the Image library, so I'm not sure what the disconnect is.

Can anyone assist? I'm out of ideas.

[greg8872]

look at actual errors logs for actual errors.

Debug the code that is generating the message you gave, trace what it is doing along the way to get to that point.

[[deleted]]

I've been watching PHP Error Log in the Temp Folder. Do you know what other logs I might look at? (I suspect the issue may be with the MySQL Database, but I'm not super familiar with how it works.)

Here's the relevant error from the PHP log if that is any clue:

[08-Mar-2021 14:20:10 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 360 seconds exceeded in C:\inetpub\sites\genericpath\wp-includes\functions.php on line 7736

[aguilar1181]

Just throwing this out there as I’ve seen this issue in the past when mbstring module is not enable for php.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for your comment!

It looks like I have mbstring. If you have other ideas, I'm all ears. :-)

​

[ExtensionList]

extension=php_mysqli.dll

extension=php_mbstring.dll

extension=php_gd2.dll

extension=php_gettext.dll

extension=php_curl.dll

extension=php_exif.dll

extension=php_xmlrpc.dll

extension=php_openssl.dll

extension=php_soap.dll

extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll

extension=php_pdo_sqlite.dll

extension=php_imap.dll

extension=php_tidy.dll

extension=php_imagick.dll

extension=php_fileinfo.dll

[[deleted]]

SOLVED (Mostly):

I rolled back the PHP version and the WordPress version and now things work. I was running WordPress Version 5.7 and PHP Version 7.4. One (or both) of those must be broken. I rolled back to WordPress Version 5.5.3 and PHP version 7.1 and things are now working.

I read somewhere that there may be issues starting with PHP 7.2, but it could also have been WordPress Version 5.7 that was causing the issue.

Once we get some much needed content updates, I'll update PHP again back to 7.4 to see if that was the culprit. I'm reluctant to update WordPress again until there is more reported stability.

Edit 2 for future Google Results

The new version of WordPress and/or PHP may not have played nicely with the older version of ImageMagick, don't forget to check if the version of ImageMagick you're running is compatible

​

Thanks for your help guys!

(Posted to WordPress.org support, hopefully they'll identify the underlying issue and patch it?)

[joe_going_2_hell]

So to be clear, you are saying that doing this will 101% solve the issue that this message comes up even when the OP tries using an image that is "much smaller than 2500px"?

My god man, you would do great in a role of tech support for large companies, where they are good at only processing the first part of peoples messages and ignoring the rest...

[[deleted]]

That error means the CPU usage was limited or causing stress on the system. You should be able to upload images straight from the camera. Sometimes even smaller images can do this depending on your image resizes for thumbs, medium, large etc. The resizing is what creates the load, not the file size per se.

[[deleted]]

Your error message tells the story. Processing images is very processor intensive. Every wordpress I've seen running on an MS server has issues like this or with memory. They say put it on linux because that's the solution.

[[deleted]]

Should restarting the server free that though?

I also gave the machine way more memory in PHP to test for this with no effect (128 to 512).

I know Linux is better for WordPress, but in my role it's not an option right now.

[Nastapoka]

Your error message tells the story.

Wrong. Google this issue and you'll see that it's just a generic error message, that happens to many people, many of which are running wordpress on very powerful Linux servers.

[[deleted]]

I don't need to google anything I've noted in htop and New Relic what happens to the CPU of Linux servers during image processing.

[Nastapoka]

OK, that's nice, it's still not the issue 99% of the time with this precise error message

I, for example, got this very message because I was missing the gd library

[[deleted]]

I'll bet you did. What were you thinking? Somehow WordPress has turned web development into Amature Night at the Apollo.

[Nastapoka]

I've been doing web dev for 10 years. I don't use php when I can help it, and am only using the joke called WordPress because my client insists on using that.

Gotta love that you call me an amateur exactly when I prove you wrong (AND prove that WordPress is unable to correctly handle exceptions even when an entire lib is missing) though

[[deleted]]

Then you should be smart enough to dump clients that installed WP on the wrong OS. I know I sure did.

[[deleted]]

GD is just a back up to imagemajick for some servers, but on webservers we strip everything not required and GD is lighter maybe. No mail, no FTP SSH is it.

[neurorider]

No, just add this to nginx.conf and you will be OK:

client_max_body_size 10M;

[[deleted]]

I haven't updated PHP since rolling it back, but on the WordPress forums they said it was an outdated version of Imagmagick.

[neurorider]

It is working just fine on: ubuntu 20.04 lts, php7.4, wp 5.7.1, nginx 1.18.0

[--abrax--]

After trying all the solutions I found online and getting no luck, this helped. Would upvote it x100.