Gallery thumbnail issue

[Forumadmin]

There has been a problem with the Gallery building thumbnails for a few days. I suspect the host has changed something. Meanwhile I have redirected the processing of images to a different set of software and rebuilt all the thumbnails. Anyway it gave me something to do. Jen is now home; but I am still having to go to the hospital for various things. This morning at 4.30 a.m. I had to take her to emergency unit as her vaccum pump seemed to fail. My fault-finding skills at that time of the morning were not too good, having had just a couple of hours sleep! The previous day I had to follow the ambulance to two hospitals as her feeding tube had come out, she was re-admitted after only being discharge for 4 hrs. I collected her again from hospital at 22.00 hrs last night. Hopefully her six week ordeal in hospital is now finished.

Chris, Sharon, Jack and Amy are at a car show today, so awaiting their return.

[Forumadmin]

The hosting company has replied 'they had to disable a function because of security issues'. I had already swapped to the alternative functions so we will have to see what we are missing.

This only emphasises my strong stance on 'security'. Those using other web facilities should be wary of what they keep on them, not all hosting providers are so diligent. You may also like to combine this with another topic where it was advised we should be increasingly wary of car theft.

[The Bradford man]

I noticed the Thumbnail problem when I up loaded a few photos yesterday.

[Forumadmin]

So did I . I looked at the error log, contacted the hosting company; but in the meantime, I rebuilt all the thumbnails with the alternative process. All should be OK but let me know if you see any issues.

One thing to look at is the quality of any photos processed by the GD toolkit that is now used. It is reputed to be not as good as the ImageMagick toolkit that has now been stopped because of security issues.

I notice that some of you are loading HUGE files into Gallery which really are not necessary. A 3 to 6Mega Pixel image is not usually required to display the picture adequately . You should try to keep them less than 1 MegaPixel. PLEASE use the graphics software on your PC to do this . See the Gallery help on this site. Some technical drawings or pictures of historical interest may warrant the larger file size.

For the techies.
To process an image the compressed (jpg) file is constructed into an uncompressed file in memory. So a lot of memory is required.
For example: Say you have an image that is 2576 X 1932 that is only a 1.4 Meg image compressed (jpeg)
Uncompressed: 2576 X 1932 X 4 = ~20Megs!
That means the poor old jowett.net server needs to find at least 20 million bytes of memory to process a moderate quality image. Bigger ones may well cause the server process to run out of memory.
So please resize in your computer not jowett.net.

[The Bradford man]

Its a pitty photos have to be decreased in Size. Since the large photos are quite handy for showing fine detail.
I would resize mine but my photo software does not work.
All my photos are in 3.6 Mega Pixel.

[Forumadmin]

What Operating System? Microsoft Paint is adequate.

You really do need detail over the whole picture to justify an uncompressed 3.6Mega Pixel image. Try cropping to just show the detail and include a larger picture, but more compressed, to show the location of the detail.

Not only do such large images require storage, but also they take a long time to download and might strain the server, if everybody did it.

Gallery does resize images; but keeps your original, so you have the best of both worlds. Have a look and see which images justify the large format by selecting the two sizes in the Gallery. Note the thumbnail is an even more compressed resize of the original; but is often all that is required to convey the message.

[Keith Andrews]

The hosting company has replied 'they had to disable a function because of security issues'.

Thats a load of rubbish.....
They most proberly disabled because of the memory reason, or put another way, they have run put of memory on the server...over exteneded and not prepared t admitt it...If they did they would have to compensate
I have a very low opinion of people in my industry, If I had 10c for everythine I have heard an issue to be "...a virus caused that...." or ...security issue...." I would be a very rich man

Been a few yrs since had to go into the config of my 2 gallery sites, I had an issue of occassionally locking up the server.. A setting to have thumbs random or 1st or last....set to one of the latter and have that image small.....and the 'security issue' goes away

If it was a security issue and and they are so though, how is it its taken them so long to find it?...or did the server slow?

[Forumadmin]

It is a security issue. They gave me the option to re-enable with the inherent risk; but for now I think we can live without it. The reason I asked for the facility in the first place was to allow processing of pdf files within Gallery. I can discuss privately what the issue is. I am currently looking at alternatives; but will also see if the security vulnerability can be controlled. Such analysis takes time which I do not have.

The GD libraries now used are in fact more memory hungry than the ImageMagick ones in use previously. However, I can see how some may have the wool pulled over their eyes. The support I get is helpful from the two companies I have chosen for jowett.org and jowett.net; but I can still be critical when it is not.

Security vulnerabilities are uncovered even in code that has been operational for years. Threats and risks also change. Sure, some of the security vulnerabilities do cause excessive use of compute resource if they are exploited; but I see it as in the client's interest that such threats are mitigated so as to protect the service for all the hosting company's users.

[Keith Andrews]

I orginally used ImageMagick, but changed to netpbm with better results if that helps.

[Forumadmin]

I have seen good reports of that library. Does it process pdf?

[Keith Andrews]

Description etc here
http://linux.die.net/man/1/netpbm