I tried to upload a custom avatar, it could be succesfully uploaded, but when requesting https://example.com/user_avatar/example.com/example_user/96/11_2.png, it just returned 500 error. The default anonymous avatar has no this error. Latest master Discourse branch. Cloudflare R2 is used as my S3 storage.

@avidseeker When you use a OSS service and your server can’t access it, for example, you are in China and your server’s connections to Cloudflare R2 are blocked by the local ISP. When clients try to acquire custom avatar resources, your server has to acquire it from the OSS, but failing, then returning 500 to the clients. In my case, setting two env vars: HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY to a proxy server which is able to access your OSS service. If you installed Discourse with standard installation, in your app.xml it should have a field called env, add those two variables and then you can run. I used unsupported installation and use Systemd to manage Discourse, so I added two Environment parameters in the .service file. I don’t know whether your country has network censor system. If so, I can assume you already know what to do; If not, check out your OSS service’s online status and your settings about S3.

[image] About deploying Discourse on Windows Server Self-hosting I insist on my way, now the forum has been perfectly deployed without Docker. Are you on an #unsupported-install? In any case 500 alone isn’t sufficient information. Please share the related log info and someone might help you.

Of course. By the way, I have used Cloudflare R2 (S3-compatible) to store upload content, when I checked out files in the bucket, the avatar file was actually there, but clients could not access it with https://example.com/user_avatar/example.com/example_user/96/11_2.png, it’s so weird.

In production.log, I found this line: Processing by UserAvatarsController#show as PNG Parameters: {"hostname" => "example.com", "username" => "example_user", "size" => "288", "version" => "12_2"} Completed 418 in 599ms (Views: 4.1ms | ActiveRecord: 0.0ms (0 queries, 0 cached) | GC: 0.4ms)

This may be related to: [image] /user_avatar returns HTTP 500 after new update Support All avatars showing up like this: [image] When opened in a new tab `http://forum.example.org/user_avatar/forum.example.org/user/48/681_2.png\` responds with HTTP 500. I’m using an S3 upload for images (blackblaze). Seems that an avatar image is uploaded there. Tried disabling it, still the same issue. Doesn’t seem like a proxy issue. Tried binding port to the server, same issue. Opening `http://localhost:8082/user_avatar/forum.example.org/user/48/681_2.png\` results in: [image] This only … Could be an S3 issue with the latest version :thinking:.

Okay, wish it is just a problem belong to the current nightly version. It is solved by setting a proxy.

Returning 500 when requesting users' custom avatars

Product Support

avidseeker October 3, 2025, 11:43pm 8

Hey @MoRanYue, could you elaborate more on how you solved it?

I facing the same problem.

Thanks

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Returning 500 when requesting users' custom avatars

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