*.lha File Downloads Fixed (Kiwihosting and MIME types)

Posted by Hans de Ruiter

This morning I received an email telling me that the template downloads in one of my OpenGL/MiniGL templates was no longer working. This surprised me since they had worked previously. What was even more perplexing was that the files were exactly in the right place; the download link pointed to the file. Stranger still, image files in the same directory could be downloaded and viewed without a problem.

The problem was eventually traced to a missing MIME type for *.lha archives. MIME, or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is a method of identifying which files belong to which program. Thus, adding the following MIME type to the server, solved the problem:

The HELM server configuration pages on kiwihosting.net.nz's Windows servers has a section called "MIME Types," in which custom MIME types can be added.

Exactly why this suddenly changed, I do not know. It definitely worked without having to add this MIME type not too long ago. My only hope is that this was recent, so that not many visitors were affected.

Comments (0) | 4 February 2009