Remove hard-coded 8GB upload limit in client (#1293)

* Remove hard-coded 8GB upload limit in client

Ideally we'd know what the specific server's configured upload limit
is before starting, but this 8GB limit is not useful if an administrator
has changed the nginx post limit on the server.

* Better docs for admins about client_max_body_size

Seems like some admins already tweak this value up or down to allow
for different maximum video upload sizes. The current codebase has no
other server-side limits that I'm aware of, and I've been routinely
uploading quite large videos to my instance.

This patch replaces the somewhat incorrect (or outdated?) 'hard limit'
comment with some advice about allocating enough space for nginx and
communicating the limit with your users.

Of course it would be better if this configuration could be unified with
PeerTube's config somehow. I'm not sure whether the best option there is
to turn off nginx's buffering here and let PeerTube handle the entire upload
(can we do this only for the video upload API endpoint?) or whether we want
PeerTube to generate nginx configs in a more automated way layer. In any case,
this patch is intended as an incremental improvement.

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/support/nginx/peertube b/support/nginx/peertube
index e0b006088..914ca3741 100644
--- a/support/nginx/peertube
+++ b/support/nginx/peertube
@@ -96,8 +96,18 @@ server {
     proxy_set_header Host $host;
     proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 
-    # Hard limit, PeerTube does not support videos > 8GB
+    # This is the maximum upload size, which roughly matches the maximum size of a video file
+    # you can send via the API or the web interface. By default this is 8GB, but administrators
+    # can increase or decrease the limit. Currently there's no way to communicate this limit
+    # to users automatically, so you may want to leave a note in your instance 'about' page if
+    # you change this.
+    #
+    # Note that temporary space is needed equal to the total size of all concurrent uploads.
+    # This data gets stored in /var/lib/nginx by default, so you may want to put this directory
+    # on a dedicated filesystem.
+    #
     client_max_body_size 8G;
+
     proxy_connect_timeout       600;
     proxy_send_timeout          600;
     proxy_read_timeout          600;