Unable to upload or view files through the CKEditor

Question

This weekend I updated our test environment to CivCRM 5.10.0 running on Wordpress 5.0.3 and PHP 7.2.

I now find that if I use the CKEditor in e.g. Message Templates and click the Image button in the toolbar, then click Browse Server, the popup window comes back completely blank.

Likewise, if I try to upload a file, I get a popup saying "Incorrect Server Response" and the JS console shows

ckeditor.js:19 [CKEDITOR] Error code: filetools-response-error. {responseText: ""}

Similar errors I have found seem to suggest a file path or permissions error, but that they all seem to be correct as far as I can tell (and working fine on the production machine). PHP.ini memory limit is 2Gb, post_max_size is 1Gb and upload_max_filesize is 1Gb. I can't find any other errors being logged by the system.

Any thoughts as to where I can look next?

Steve

Answer 1

I'm not sure this is an answer to your question, since you seem to have a specific error. Nevertheless, we've had a similar problem and so it may be helpful to hear our solution: When the file browser gives a blank screen for our users, the problem seems to arise from slow internet connections causing some problems in the computer's DNS cache. If we clear the browser cache completely AND also the computer's DNS cache then it magically works again.

This is for us in Civicrm 5.10 and Drupal 7 latest, so again, our situation may be different to yours. For instructions on clearing computer's DNS caches we used links like this for mac and this for Windows 10.

Answer 2

There are a variety of reasons this can happen - but a good first step is to disable asset caching on Administer menu » System Settings » Debug and Backtrace. This only creates a modest performance hit, will often work around the problem immediately, and is an excellent troubleshooting step for finding the permanent solution.

Answer 3

I too have struggled with this issue. For lack of a better term I've found that it's a corruption in the browser's cookie cache. If I open my developer tools and check my Application Storage and then clear my cookies for the site, after I re log-in to the site I am able to browse the server.

Drupal 7 CiviCRM / 5.19.3

Update: Prompted by another answer I found here https://civicrm.stackexchange.com/a/29355/140, I set directory 755 for /civicrm/packages/kcfinder in a Drupal 7 / CiviCRM 5.57.0 site and it appears to have done the job after I deleted the session cookie in my browser and then logged in again.

Answer 4

Yet another completely different approach to the above answers that has helped us, is to be aware of the number of files in the folder you are asking CKEditor's KCFinder to browse.

We accumulate 1,000 images per year, and so when the popup has to show all these images it has to download thumbnails for them all. If a user has slow internet it's interminable. And sometimes seems to make the whole process balk.

We've overcome this by making new folders for images every year. Eg ../images/emails-2022, ../images/events-2023, etc etc.

Also, if you set your window to search a list rather than as thumbnails it dramatically speeds up the process if your folder has many images.

We've also had to use all the methods above!