Pictures upload failing when creating a new observation via web browser

what kind of machines did you use? can you post a screenshot of your browser console messages? have you noticed any internet connection issues when visiting other sites?

Here is a screenshot of my console with error message. All other websites that visit seem to be working just fine. My primary computer is a Dell Optiplex 7080, and my laptop is an “Omen” laptop.

Or there’s an issue on the iNat end. My MBP is fairly “beefy”, with 32 gb ram, customized with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M video card (with 8gb VRAM), and a 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 processor. I keep it clean and up to date - no extensions other than DuckDuckGo (which is disabled at present.) Not quite a year old I’ve never had issues until the last week or so. My internet connection is smoking! It is only uploading pics to iNat that is an issue. If it was my machine or my connection I should be seeing issues elsewhere along with buffering, dropped packets etc… which I am not.

I first experienced the problem yesterday. I am on ATT fiber. I tried two different Windows machines, an android tablet, and my mobile phone. All experienced the problem. With wifi off on my phone (Verizon) I got images. I have reset my gateway and local router with no improvement. Occasionally a few images load but 90% of the time nothing. Is there any info coming from ATT?

unless you encounter problems on the upload page, i think your post belongs over at: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/creative-common-licensed-photos-not-loading/34760/10

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Are you still experiencing the problem? Have you contacted ATT? Any help from them?
The discussion has been moved. You will find my posts there.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/creative-common-licensed-photos-not-loading/34760/10

Thanks for the reports folks - we’re looking into the source of this problem. To be clear - this thread is about issues uploading photos. Any problems viewing photos outside ones that just failed to upload are outside the scope of this topic and probably have a very different cause, and one outside our control.

People having trouble uploading photos recently, could you please try again and see if anything is different? If you are still having problems uploading and are comfortable using browser developer tools like what’s included in some screenshot here, could you please open developer tools then click into the network tab before uploading a photo. That tab shows all network requests made, and one should just have the name “photos” representing the upload to the /photos endpoint. It would be helpful if you could then click on that and then screenshot or copy paste everything you see in the “General” and “Response Headers” sections of the Headers tab (it will be selected by default), and share that directly with me via a direct message - that would be very helpful. There is sensitive information in the “Request” headers section at the bottom, including the “Authorization” header - I do not need that information. [edit: as @pisum rightly points out below - please do not share header information publicly in this thread, particularly headers relating to “Authorization” or “Cookies”]

I appreciate the screenshots already included, but there’s not much information to go on in the Console tab, and will be more to use in the Network tab.

Unfortunately the problem seems isolated to a few users and not easy to replicate, so I’m still looking for an underlying cause and a way to reproduce the problem myself. If anyone can consistently reproduce the problem and is willing to spend a little time working with me in real time, please message me directly and I’ll reach out to set up a time where we could spend 10-15 minutes at your convenience to work together to get more information.

Thanks for your patience while we get to the bottom of the upload failures.

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there might be JWT information in the headers. are you sure you want folks to share all that publicly?

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Shoot - you’re absolutely right. I’ll edit my post to recommend people direct message header information and not post it publicly, and even then remove anything related to “Authorization” or “Cookies”

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I am having the same problem. Previous observations have completely disappeared on laptop but not on phone. Most recent observation did not appear as photo on phone. I have checked with ATT. This problem started 8/23/2022

@tatejack this bug report is specifically for the web uploader, when adding photos results in the red exclamation point error. See the screenshot and description in the original post here and the various posts that follow it. Is that what you’re encountering? If not, I suspect you want this bug report.

Not only does my upload fail, all my observation photos no longer appear

Haven’t been able to complete an upload in days but I have been too busy to help fix the issue.

Trying to upload batches of about 300-400 images, browser begins to lag and ultimately crashes, using Firefox, OS specs below…

Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 21H2
Installed on ‎3/‎15/‎2021
OS build 19044.1889
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4180.0

crashing is almost definitely a different issue than what’s being described in the original post. in your case, 300-400 images is a lot to do all at once. try loading in smaller batches, and let us know if you still encounter crashes.

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@kenk, it looks like you might be following the other thread about Creative Commons pictures not displaying. I just now gave the steps for solving that problem. If you were also having problems uploading photos (not clear whether you were or not), you might see if the same steps fix that problem for you, too.

Sorry for hte late update. @pleary was able to do some debugging with someone experiencing this issue but couldn’t make any headway, unfortunately.

We’re gonna see if we can use a server to simulate the problem on our end becuase none of us can still replicate it, which makes it so difficult investigate. I do apologize for those being affecting by this bug.

Is anyone still experiencing the problem described in the first post? If so, it would be helpful to get more information like:

  • What operating system are you using, and what version?
  • What web browser are you using and what version?

If there are any updates to your OS or browser I’d recommend applying them and trying again. If you are still having the problem and are willing to spend some time working with me to investigate it, please direct message me.

This is out of scope of this bug report, but I’d recommend never uploading more than about 50 photos at one time. We’ve considered adding a hard limit, but haven’t done that yet.

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I previously reported this issue but I was able to upload as usual from this machine/browser/OS so it looks like it’s been fixed for me, thank you

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@pleary @tiwane Ugh I spoke too soon :(

The issue occurs in all browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) on Mac OS 12.5.1. I reproduced it on another laptop running 12.5. My connectivity seems to be working fine otherwise, I have (up) 200.49 Mbps / (down) 33.20 Mbps via a wireless router, no firewall / proxy / port restriction configured on my network, and I am able to download and upload photos on other websites just fine (including the screenshot above).

@pleary DM’ing you.