413 “Request Entity Too Large” error with uploading a file

Question

In assets when uploading a medium size file I get this error:

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 413 (Request Entity Too Large)

What does it mean? And how to fix?

Answer 1

413 errors occur when the request body is larger than the server is configured to allow. Here’s how you can fix it, depending on your web server:

• Apache: Set the LimitRequestBody directive in either your httpd.conf file or a local .htaccess file. (https://stackoverflow.com/a/3719358/1688568)

• Nginx: Set the client_max_body_size directive in nginx.conf (http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-bsd-nginx-413-request-entity-too-large/)

• IIS: Set the uploadreadaheadsize config setting (https://web.archive.org/web/20160204040121/http://blogs.msdn.com:80/b/jiruss/archive/2007/04/13/http-413-request-entity-too-large-can-t-upload-large-files-using-iis6.aspx)

You also might want to try increasing PHP’s upload_max_filesize and post_max_size settings in php.ini or using the php_value directive in your .htaccess file if you’re using Apache (http://davidwalsh.name/php-values-htaccess).

Answer 2

You need to configure both nginx and php to allow upload size.

Nginx configuration

The client_max_body_size directive assigns the maximum accepted body size of client request, indicated by the line Content-Length in the header of request. If size is greater the given one, then the client gets the error "Request Entity Too Large" (413).

Source.

Answer 3

Spent a whole day working with the administrator at our web host trying to solve this problem. All the fixes suggested here and other sites did not help. The problem turned out to be with my third party VPN. Once that connections was turned off I was able to upload and install a Joomla extension without problem. So if you are getting a 413 message and nothing seems to fix it check that your VPN is not the culprit.