IIS WordPress Uploaded Files 500 Error

 

therI cannot believe I ran into the same problem I blogged about 3 years ago.  So I am add more symptoms and more details to the problem.  I hope it will save many people using IIS WordPress hours of troubleshooting.

Symptoms:

• You are running WordPress on IIS
• You cannot even upload a file or image to WordPress Media Library
• After you upload a file or image to WordPress Media Library, you cannot access the file via URL.  For example, http://www.xxxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/xxxx.pdf would only return a server 500 error.  Or if you have an uploaded image, you may see a broken image icon in WordPress.
• You can across this problem after you upgrade your WordPress site to a new or different version of PHP.

Causes:

This is caused by configuration of

• IIS configuration of PHP and the NTFS permissions set on specific folders.

Quick Fix:

1. Add {serveranme}/IIS_IUSRS with read permission to the file, or uploads folder or wp-content folder.  Obviously, if you choose wp-content, you can propagate the permission down to subfolder and files.
2. This only fixes the uploaded files in the WordPress site.  You may still get the same problem with future uploaded files.

Solution:

1. Locate your php.ini.  For example, C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP\vX.X
2. Always check your php.ini to see the setting value for “upload_tmp_dir”.  The default value is probably “C:\Windows\Temp”.  It is critical that you verify this.  In fact, I recommend you create a new folder and use it exclusively for PHP upload temp directory.  For example, you can create a “C:\PHP_upload_temp”
3. Now you need to apply the appropriate permissions to 2 folders with 2 users:

	wp-content (or uploads)	PHP upload temp directory (C:\PHP_upload_temp)
IUSR	Modify	Modify
{servername}/IIS_IUSRS	Read	Read

• The above suggestions should work.  You may reduce the permission to see if it works for you.
• NTFS uses inherited permissions.  You should use Properties/Security/Advanced to view the permissions.
• The permissions must be set property in PHP upload temp directory first.  The uploaded file will be uploaded to that directory before it is copied to the wp-content/uploads folder.
• If you see “Parent Object’’” under “Inherited from”, it may indicate some orphaned permission.
• “When you upload a file, PHP sends the file to a temporary directory on the hard drive (for me it is C:\Windows\Temp) and then copies it over to it’s intended directory.  Once the file has landed in the temporary directory, it is assigned the permissions of that directory. The problem is when Windows copies that file, it keeps the temporary directory’s permissions and doesn’t inherit your web directory’s permissions.”

Reference:

Again, the following 3 articles really help:

http://www.howyoudo.info/index.php/how-to-fix-windows-server-upload-file-inherit-permissions-error/

http://www.amixa.com/blog/2011/04/29/iis-wordpress-images-500-error/

http://chris.wastedhalo.com/2011/01/wordpress-upload-permissions-on-iis-7-fix/

note: I don’t think creator owner plays a part in this problem.

BitmapEncoder: “The image has corrupted metadata header.” “The image metadata header is unrecognized.”

Background:

I have 2 .tiff image files and I want to merge them into one .tiff file.  I use TIffBitmapEncoder.  I use TiffBitmapDecoder to decode the file memory stream and add to encoder.Frames.

Problem:

When I try to use the encoder to Save() to the output filestream, I get an argument exception saying “The image has corrupted metadata header.” with an inner exception “The image metadata header is unrecognized.”

Solution:

Load the input memory stream into a bitmap and save it to another temporary memory stream.  It seems to fix the header.  Then you use this fixed memory stream for the decoder.

Below is some of my partial code.  You need to create the output filestream and close all the memory stream and dispose, etc.

   1: TiffBitmapEncoder encoder = new TiffBitmapEncoder();

   2:  

   3: encoder.Compression = TiffCompressOption.Default;

   4:  

   5: MemoryStream convertedMemoryStream = new MemoryStream();

   6: var bitmap = new Bitmap(ms); // input memory stream

   7:  

   8: bitmap.Save(convertedMemoryStream, ImageFormat.Tiff); // save it again as a tiff, hoping it fixes the header meta data

   9: ms.Position = 0;

  10: convertedMemoryStream.Position = 0;

  11:  

  12: var decoder = new TiffBitmapDecoder(convertedMemoryStream, BitmapCreateOptions.PreservePixelFormat, BitmapCacheOption.Default);

  13: bitmapSource = decoder.Frames[0];

  14:  

  15: encoder.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(bitmapSource));

  16:  

  17: encoder.Save(sTiff); // sTiff is a FileStream to the output file