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 …

@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 retur…

[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…

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. …

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

[image] MoRanYue: Solved by setting a proxy Hey @MoRanYue , could you elaborate more on how you solved it? I facing the same problem. Thanks

Returning 500 when requesting users' custom avatars

Support

NateDhaliwal (Nate Dhaliwal) October 1, 2025, 11:04am 5

This may be related to:

Could be an S3 issue with the latest version .

Topic		Replies	Views
/user_avatar returns HTTP 500 after new update Support s3	7	201	October 20, 2025
User cannot use custom avatar with Amazon S3 Bug	41	6799	March 21, 2015
Custom Avatars "gone" after updating to 3.3.0beta1 Support	8	340	June 26, 2024
How are avatars stored and accessed? Support	6	2055	November 18, 2016
Avatars take a long time to load after moving to S3-compatible R2 Self-hosting s3	23	339	July 4, 2026

Returning 500 when requesting users' custom avatars

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