Broken Images and Their S3 URLs

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

After the recent update to 2.5.0.beta7 all my images on the forum are broken.

The avatar is also replaced by default one. These are my suggestions on the dashboard:

My Staff Posts for Assets:

One such image: /original/2X/4/4064b1cc32199de63ad2fa2b5bd2a0c5b6872c6d.png

However, my S3 has no such image: (why did this happen?)

My favicon and other logos are missing: /original/1X/b32666bfe0e0eac40aacb178c7430c9f7873b397.png

However, my S3 has these files only:

Notice how the URL is wrong and there is no 1X folder inside the original folder.

I tried following the tutorial of this post:

Old image uploads become broken images

For the past week or so (after the most recent upgrade?), I’ve noticed that some users’ uploaded images are broken. It is clear that they are pasting an image, as the code in their post looks like that, but the files are missing. For example, this post (raw version has three broken images in it. I cannot imagine what the user could have done to break them. And stranger still, sometimes a post will have some images that work fine, but others that are missing. I’ve done find in the uploads direct…

But it did not fix anything.

[Benjamin_D (Benjamin Decotte)]

@masterakay

One such image: /original/2X/4/4064b1cc32199de63ad2fa2b5bd2a0c5b6872c6d.png

may I point out that this image is not in your bucket, it’s 4061…41.png ?
Is it present locally ?

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

@masterakay

However, my S3 has:

I’m sorry, wrong choice of words. I meant to say I noticed it isn’t in the S3 bucket, none of them are.

How do I check for it locally?

[Benjamin_D (Benjamin Decotte)]

Oh, makes indeed more sense
You could check locally with any ssh client that you like, depending on your setup, the files should be in something like /var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads/default/original/2X/
so you might ls -R /var/discourse/shared/standalone/uploads/ | grep 4064b to find the 4064b…d.png

[rithvikvibhu]

Talking about the same Discourse instance as @masterakay here.

We switched over to s3 over 2 years ago, none of the files in the local uploads directory are newer than 2018.

As I understand, images are uploaded in the “original” folder, and processed (cropped, reduced in size, etc.) and put in the “optimized” folder. The URLs used by discourse when uploading images are still from the “/original/1X/” folder. Somehow, with the upgrade, the “1X” folder is gone.

There’s a “default” folder which as a lot of uploads (images, etc.) as well as cropped versions. There are about 10k files here making it ~2.5 GB.

The problem is the image URL in the posts always have the “original” one.
Something we noticed is that the missing files are a subset of the files in the “default” folder.
New uploads work without issues and are stored in “/original/2X/”.

Does anyone have ideas where the “/original/1X/” folder may have gone and if it possible to bring it back?

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

@sam @codinghorror I’m so sorry to drag you into this, but it’s quite urgent. We’re students and sort of helpless with the college mounting pressure on us to fix the images.

[Ryan_Nix]

I’m seeing this as well, and it just started after a more recent update.

SESP Discourse

[schleifer (Andrew Schleifer)]

How do you have S3 setup? Did you set any values in app.yml or just in the admin UI? It looks like something is unexpected for DISCOURSE_S3_BUCKET or DISCOURSE_S3_BACKUP_BUCKET.

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

Yes, like I explained, everything was fine until the recent update. We have followed all the steps.
In particular, we did something like this:

Setting up file and image uploads to S3

So, you want to use S3 to handle image uploads? Here’s the definitive guide: S3 registration Head over to https://aws.amazon.com/free/ and click on [Create a Free Account] During the create account process, make sure you provide payment information, otherwise you won’t be able to use S3. There’s no registration fee, you will only be charged for what you use, if you exceed the AWS Free Usage Tier. Bucket Go to S3 and click on Create bucket, then fill out the Bucket name. Remember this name bec…

@schleifer

DISCOURSE_S3_BUCKET or DISCOURSE_S3_BACKUP_BUCKET

As for these values, I can’t seem to find any variable set in app.yml. It wasn’t previously required. Did something change?

[schleifer (Andrew Schleifer)]

@masterakay

everything was fine until the recent update

Indeed. Something may not be working right in the code, but we don’t know what nor why. So we need more information.

@masterakay

We have followed all the steps.

There are two different ways to setup S3: You can configure the environment in app.yml or you can enter the values in the admin UI. The variables are named slightly differently in each.

The topic you linked to describes how to setup in the admin UI. If that is how you setup your site, can you tell us what you have for s3_upload_bucket, and s3_backup_bucket?

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

@schleifer

The topic you linked to describes how to setup in the admin UI. If that is how you setup your site, can you tell us what you have for s3_upload_bucket , and s3_backup_bucket ?

[Ryan_Nix]

@schleifer Same for me. I haven’t changed anything in those settings, either. I also verified my AWS credentials are working.

[schleifer (Andrew Schleifer)]

Oh, that explains it.

The problem happened because those settings are not supposed to be the same value – search the setup topic for the line “Do I really need to use separate buckets for uploads and backups?”
A maintenance job ran on the contents of the backup bucket and affected the uploads because their values overlapped.

@sam we should probably enforce that in code, not just documentation

To fix up your site, there’s two steps:

First, you’ll need to change the backups prefix – adding /backups to the end as described in the setup topic, is sufficient.

After, move everything in the S3 bucket back into the correct place. Everything in the top “default” folder should get put back at the top level.
E.g. there’s probably “default/originals” folder there which should be moved up.

You’ll have to use the AWS web console or some other tool to browse the bucket.

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

Alright, thank you so much! I shall try the steps out and come back here in case anything ever happens. Any idea why this happened all of a sudden?

[rithvikvibhu]

Hey @schleifer that makes sense and added the backups prefix to the bucket name.

As for the existing uploads, all the uploads are in /default/ (not in sub-folders). The image urls in posts (and everywhere else) use /original/* or /optimized/*.

If we move everything in the default folder up one level (to the root), then the images will be in /*.
And no, there aren’t any folders within defaults, just upload files. It seems to contain files with standard 40-char hash filename as well as some with suffixes like “_2_10x10” (which I presume are from optimized).

How do you suggest fixing this? Fixing all posts with new links will take time. Is it possible to somehow group the files in the correct folders based on this filename?

[masterakay (Aekansh Dixit)]

@schleifer any updates on this?

[schleifer (Andrew Schleifer)]

@rithvikvibhu

As for the existing uploads, all the uploads are in /default/ (not in sub-folders).

That’s…unexpected. We’ll have to fix up a bunch of stuff by hand, then.

The most important question would be “are new uploads going to the correct location?”

Assuming that’s true, you can put the old uploads in a known location and adjust their database entry. How many files are there in /default/?

[rithvikvibhu]

The new uploads are working as expected into sub-folders, fortunately. And the links in posts point to the correct location.

There are >10k files in /default/. Editing each post manually seems like a lot of work. Is there any way to script this? Maybe with a regex replace on all posts?

[schleifer (Andrew Schleifer)]

@rithvikvibhu

Is there any way to script this?

That’s the plan, yes. The next thing to do is put all the AWOL files in a known location. In the bucket, what sub-directories are there under /original/? There should be /1X/ and there may be others.

[rithvikvibhu]

This is the complete folder structure. New uploads (works fine) are stored in /original/2X/*/.jpg

/
|---backups
    |---default
        |---(bunch if backups .tar.gz files)
|---default
    |---(10719 uploaded files pdf, images, etc.)
|---inventory
    |---1/pesuioforum/{optimized,original}/[DATE]/manifest.{checksum,json}
|---optimized
    |---1X
        |---(2 files)
    |---2X
        |---{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f}
            |---(uploaded files that start with the folder's name char above) (1055 files in total)
|---original
    |---2X
        |---(Same as optimized/2X, 520 files)
|---tombstone
    |---optimized
        |---1X
            |---(2 files)
    |---original
        |---2X
            |---(Same as optimized/2X, 1 file)

The next thing to do is put all the AWOL files in a known location.

The /default/ already seems to have all the images.