Webform protected downloads does not work for anonymous users

Would it be possible for you to let me see the test server that you are using? You can send me the url as a private message if you like.

Please try the patch on this issue: #1179064: Cached access denied page at system/files/private/... (making sure to clear your cache)

I have the same problem. It used to work for me, where anonymous user is able to download the file from a secure link.
However, this time when I uploaded a new file, it only worked for a authentic user. Anonymous user are able to view the page, from the secure link, but after a few seconds it will display 'http 500 internal server error page' for IE and 'access denied page' for firefox.

I've also tried the patch #5, but it didn't work as well.

Did you make any other changes to your sites? Any module updates, settings changed in other modules? Anything that can shed light on the fact that it used to work and then stopped?

@ Anandyrh: Did you install and configure Private Upload correctly? Meaning everything under admin/settings/private_upload is green?

Hi Berliner,

I find something interesting.

I changed the new file back to previous file and it worked.
Anonymous user is now able to download the file.

I then changed that old file to a new file name, and it works too.
However, If I changed the file to a new file with the new file name it didn't work.

The only difference between the 2 is the file size.
The old file is 48MB and the new file is 62 MB.

May be that's the problem?

I got it to work.

I've increased the php_value memory_limit to 256M in the .htaccess.

John

(Updates : The problem came back again. However it still work for IE but not other browsers. )

Hi berliner,

Is it possible to download the file through secure link without checking user role?

@johnshih: Please open a new issue.

Hi richH
Did you enabled 'view uploaded files' permission for anonymous users under 'admin/user/permissions'?

btw berliner,
I got this to work again. My problem is something to do with the cache. After I disable my boost (Boost - Static page cache), everything worked. After re-enable it, everything continue to worked just fine except a bit slower. (If I only clear the cached data it didn't work. It'll only worked after I disable and re-enable it. There must be some cache data that is still in my database which will only be cleared when I disable it.)

Hi richH,

I read in the other thread that some people had the same issue due to this problem.

Hi berliner,

I found out something interesting, which might clear things up for me.
I did a few more testing for the protected download module.

I found out that I can only download the file on the same browser(IE/Firefox/Chrome etc...) that I registered for it. However, after that browser has access to the page, the next time I registered with another browser I'm still able to access the download file.

My guess was because there is cache in the browser that gave the anonymous user access to the protected download file?! I'm not sure if I was correct about it and I'll try to investigate this further.

I have the same issue in Drupal 7. I also use boost. And I also noticed, that changing browsers gives a nice Access Denied page, except Internet Explorer. IE seems to work just fine. Clearing caches doesn't help. I was using cookies for tracking submissions, so I thought that caused problems when switching browsers, but even after disabling it, the issue still exist.

Any progress on this? I'm still not able to reproduce this issue.

http://drupal.org/node/1747898 made me think of another explanation why some people are having problems using this module.
Could you check if any of the installed contrib modules implements hook_file_download?

One way of doing this (on linux or mac) is to open the terminal, cd to sites/all/modules or wherever your contrib modules are installed and then issuing the command grep -r "_file_download" * or just do a project wide search for "_file_download".

Hi berliner,

None of my contrib modules implements hook_file_download.

Subscribe. Protected Downloads was working great. Then I started getting the Access Denied message after 2 changes:

1) I modified the file and was getting ready to upload a new version, but accidentally deleted it first via FTP before removing from the node. Then removed the node entry and uploaded a new version of the file (which had the same file name).

2) Prior to the above change, I implemented Boost and Boost Crawler the day before. Revisioning and the Diff module are implemented for this webform content type.

Clearing cache has no affect on the problem, nor does removing previous revisions.

My bad, sorry for the alert - too little time and not enough sleep. Problem was a simple permissions issue for file downloads.

Reopening this as the issue is not solved yet.

Glad to hear that it's working for you though.

Closing this old issue. It has not been possible to reproduce the described problems and the information flow has been weak.
If anybody encounters similar problems, please open a new issue.