Fortunately this issue is already solved but others might come across it as well.
One of the things I want to do in my project is to permit uploading files (by registered users only).
In order to allow this I adapted the basic script at http://perlmeme.org/tutorials/cgi_upload.html
One of the issues to address is to set the max file size. I wanted to set the maximum file size at 6MB using the well documented CGI::POST_MAX from perl.
When setting this to a low value like 2k for testing everything seemed fine but when I wanted to upload something roughly over 50k, I always got http error message: 413-Request entity too large.
Initially I checked and re-checked my script but nothing came up.
That was the right moment to take the dogs for a walk!
During the walk it dawned upon me that the error might be external, i.e. in lighttpd.
When checking the error.log upon my return, this suspicion was confirmed. The following message was abundantly present:
2013-03-10 13:06:25: (connections.c.1117) denying upload as opening to temp-file for upload failed: /var/tmp/lighttpd-upload-1qcg74 Permission denied
So this means httpd is creating a temp-file in /var/tmp for large uploads but user www (as which lighttpd runs) doesn't have write permissions here. I solved it, at least temporarily by setting the group for /var/tmp to www and changing the mode:
root@svm01:/var# ls -l | grep tmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 18 13:11 tmp
root@svm01:/var# chown .www tmp
root@svm01:/var# chmod 775 tmp
root@svm01:/var# ls -l | grep tmp
drwxrwxr-x 2 root www 4096 Dec 18 13:11 tmp
root@svm01:/var#
After this, the uploads work as intended. No files remain in /var/tmp/ when the upload is completed.
Although it would perhaps be better (for security freaks) to have a dedicated upload folder for lighttpd, this solution is good enough for me.
/emgi
