Large downloads truncated - 500 error

Hello, all. I’m not sure where to post this but I’ll start here. We launched a new MODx site at http://www.spiritualoutreach.com with several very large videos for download in both ogg and flash. They almost always truncate during download. The download says it is complete but has only downloaded anywhere from tens to hundreds of megabytes of these multi hundred megabyte files. We have tried downloading a dozen all together and they all failed at exactly the same moment. Sometimes, this is accompanied by a 500 server unavailable error which clears by itself after a few minutes.

It smells like a problem with the hosting company’s configuration. We’re using 1and1 and have usually found their support outstanding considering the price we pay. However, this time, support seems to have gone into a black hole. Before I jump up and down and get mad, I thought I had better make sure it wasn’t a known MODx problem. I did not see anything in the archives which seemed pertinent although there are several articles about the 500 error. We are using the filedownload snippet and plugin.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to look and how to troubleshoot? Thanks - John

Have you tried making a simple web page to access from outside of modx with download links in it? Or accessing the files directly via your browser?

Thank you. I was so focused on it being the host that I didn’t even think of it. Thanks for the suggestion.
It first appeared to be more successful but ultimately broke in both Windows and Linux, Firefox and IE. I am assuming that entering in the file name directly as the URI in the browser effectively bypasses MODx and thus exculpates it. Is that correct? Thanks again - John

That is correct. MODx only "does its thing" if you use the index.php file.

Are these just links directly to the files on the filesystem, or are you trying to serve them through the download snippet and/or plugin? If the latter, this will fail due to the php time_limit settings which you might not be able to override on 1&1 hosting environments.

See this FAQ in particular which relates to overriding PHP ini settings.
And this one which indicates you cannot increase the memory usage limit.