Hello,
I am trying to download a 16GB dataset (.zip) from a government open data platform, but on every browser I tried (Firefox, Chromium, Mullvad) the download is shown as “finished” at exactly 2GB. However obviously the file cannot be unpacked because it is incomplete. I was however able to download a 4.5 GB zip from the same source, so the problem is not due to a strict limit of 2 GB. The download and extraction also works flawlessly on MacOs.
I believe the issue is not with the browser, but with the NetworkManager, since just before the download “finishes” a small loading wheel is visible over the connection icon (KDE Plasma status bar)
I tried it in three different networks (wired and wireless) and the problem persisted.
All of the browsers and the system (Fedora 42 Kinoite with Plasma 6.3.5) are up to date. I do however frequently have issues with wireless connections, but I will detail that in another post.
In what way can I try to troubleshoot?
Try wget
Are you using a flatpak browser? If so, see flatpak issue 668: Large downloads can take up all memory.
You may find useful details with journalctl, but it can take some effort to filter out the mass of irrelevant detail journalctl collects.
Using command-line download tools may provide error messages that you don’t get to see using a browser.
Thank you I did not think of that, but sadly it also did not work
It started to download but after some time it returned
HTTP response 200 [https://FILESOURCE.COM/MYFILE.zip]
[Files: 1 Bytes: 1.01G [4.65MB/s] Redirects: 0 Todo: 0 Errors: 0 ]
which I think means the download finished “succesfully” but contained, again, only a part of the file
I think I found a solution? While the networks I tried were not metered themselves, they were by default set to “Metered:automatic”
$ nmcli -f connection.metered connection show $MYNETWORK
connection.metered: unknown
After I changed the status using the GUI or
$ nmcli connection modify $MYNETWORK connection.metered no
everything worked out fine.
So I believe that the downloads stalled at the 1GB or 2GB benchmark because the system was not sure if the network is metered and so it “finished” the download. Does that make sense?