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I can't upload images anymore: on the Ask Question page, the image upload dialog shows a red error message

Failed to upload image; an error occurred on the server

See the screenshot below (uploaded via imgur's own website):

The response from the server is

{"Success":false,"Error":5,"ErrorMessage":"Failed to upload image; an error occurred on the server"}

In an answer box here, the upload just fails silently; it looks like the new editor handles this differently (which is probably another ). The error message from the server is the same though.

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8
  • I'm also able to reproduce. I also tried it on chat, and I get the error message Failed to upload image, please try again!. They need to fix that comma splice.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Oct 13, 2022 at 7:28
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    Also on Meta Stack Overflow: Server Error: Failed to upload image; an error occurred on the server
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Oct 13, 2022 at 7:38
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    Tested with small PNG, JPG, and static GIF. The dialog displays the thumbnail correctly, but then fails to upload the file to the server.
    – PM 2Ring
    Oct 13, 2022 at 8:27
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    @PM2Ring The thumbnail comes from a Blob, i.e. the client side, so it doesn’t touch any servers.
    – Sebastian Simon
    Oct 13, 2022 at 9:39
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    A site breaking bug for most users wanting to post.
    – bad_coder
    Oct 13, 2022 at 10:21
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    @bad_coder It's certainly annoying, but not insurmountable: just (temporarily) use another hosting site, eg Github. On the bright side, it's an impediment to people attempting to upload images instead of text. ;)
    – PM 2Ring
    Oct 13, 2022 at 13:01
  • @Glorfindel I think it's better to change the status tag.
    – Random Person
    Oct 15, 2022 at 11:49
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    It was fixed. Its broken again and there's another post tracking it. If we're treating tags as a tracking system - in a sense, this issue was fixed, there's a new post tracking the new instance of the issue.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Oct 15, 2022 at 12:00

2 Answers 2

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22

It's not DNS
There's no way it's DNS
It was DNS

This issue has been remediated. We've manually updated our DNS records to make sure the image upload service resolves correctly. It's currently just pinned to a box and we are working with the vendor to make sure we have the appropriate entries in their Start of Authority.

I'll update with any final conclusions. There is a chance we'll blip if the server we've routed to goes down or is rotated, but we're working on getting the permanent fix up in the meantime so that doesn't happen.

Thanks for the reports and your patience everyone!

Update 1: DNS should be fully resolved and operational. We'll have some pingdom alerts in place, and we'll keep an eye out for any other issues that come up.

Update 2: The DNS fix is having trouble propagating; investigating...

Update 3: Remediated again. Will continue to investigating better resilience.

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5
  • 7
    This seems to have regressed: "Failed to upload image; an error occurred on the server" is back
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Oct 15, 2022 at 6:26
  • Confirmed, broken again (tried two sites)
    – Rmano
    Oct 15, 2022 at 11:08
  • Yes. This is also broken for me.
    – Ziggy
    Oct 15, 2022 at 11:46
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    Not sure this answer should be kept to date, as it means editing two answers every time, this one and the answer on the new report. Anyway, thanks a lot for all the efforts you put into this, this is highly appreciated. :)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Oct 15, 2022 at 12:35
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    Updated here cause there were comments here. But yeah, also don't want to cause unnecessary bumps either.
    – KyleMit StaffMod
    Oct 15, 2022 at 12:37
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At the moment, the SE/Imgur link seems broken and ANY uploads from SE to the Imgur instance will not work.

You can 'kind of' inline any image. I'd recommend holding off cause there's some advantages to the SE imgur instance that's giving issues - you can upload to imgur and get the link to the image directly, like so:

image is dragged and dropped into imgur web page. user right clicks and selects open image in new tab. Right clicks on image on newly opened tab and selects copy image location

You can then 'abuse' the link functionality on SE by uploading it as a link and adding a !, or simply doing the link in 'raw' markdown instead of using the uploader.

add link button is pressed on stack exchange editor UI. link is posted. An exclaimation mark is added to the link markdown to convert it into an inlined image markdown. Screenshot of this post is seen

For animated GIFs, you may need to get a link to the GIF from share options -> BBCode link in some cases.

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5
  • Even better than uploading the image itself.
    – Mehmet Kaplan
    Oct 13, 2022 at 17:24
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    The animated GIFs aren't very helpful to normally-sighted people, either. Nobody wants to see this kind of thing flashing all over. Just write out the steps in words, then it will be more helpful to everyone.
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Oct 13, 2022 at 20:32
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    @ColleenV tried to fix the image captions to the best of my ability - I hope its good enough. My bad on not doing it in the first place. As for the actual use of gifs - I find them useful in describing a process especially in a gui.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Oct 14, 2022 at 0:20
  • Thank you, that's a huge improvement. I probably sounded more cranky about it than I really intended, but the character limit in comments and the limits on my time in general make it hard to soften my language and be clear. I've started browsing with images turned off just to see the state of accessibility of the site I visit regularly, and it's pretty depressing. I just noticed that the "Meta" graphic button in the header has no text associated with it for example.
    – ColleenV
    Oct 14, 2022 at 12:46
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    An aside - the problem with using looping animations to show someone how to do something is that the person watching has no way to pause or slow them down and no way of knowing where in the loop they are after they start animating. It's much easier to understand written steps and static screenshots (with ALT text of course :) ) GIFs can be good illustrations of what happens if you follow steps to reproduce a bug, but not so much for telling people how to do something.
    – ColleenV
    Oct 14, 2022 at 12:48

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