problem downloading file

I write a script to force download mp3 files from a site. The code is working very fine but the problem is that it can't download large files. I tried it with a file of 9.21mb and it downloaded correctly, but whenever i try to use the code to download a file of 25mb, it simply gives me a cannot find server page or The website cannot display the page. So i now know it has problems downloading large files. Below is the code snippet that does the downloading of files.

header("Pragma: public");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
header("Cache-Control: private",false);    
header("Content-type: application/force-download");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$dname.".mp3\";" );
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header("Content-Length: ".filesize($secretfile));
$downloaded=readfile($secretfile);

The displayed error is: HTTP 500 Internal Server Error

thank u very much for ur time guys.

From stackoverflow

• Watch your PHP configuration for memory limits and timeouts

  In php.ini :

  memory_limit = 32M
  max_execution_time = 300
  

  Note that if you want to go really high in execution time you also need to change your web server timeout.

  War Coder : Thank you very much for your quick response. The site is hosted on a shared hosting package with aplus.net If i am able to edit those parameters, what should be the appropriate one i should replace it with. thanks

• It could be memory limits, but usually PHP will output an error saying that the memory limit has been reached.

  Also, before all of that you should disable output compression if it's enabled:

  if(ini_get('zlib.output_compression')) {
      ini_set('zlib.output_compression', 'Off');
  }
  

  Sometimes IE can screw up if output compression is enabled.

  War Coder : thanks 4 the advise. i will disable the output compression as advised. concerning the error thing, it might not have displayed an error coz i set error_reporting(0) . will set it to display all errors and will let u know if i can any.

  War Coder : modified the code and disabled compression and it worked. thanks man

• i simply gives me a cannot find server page or The website cannot display the page

  Is this the error as displayed by Internet Explorer? Do you get any server-side errors? Did you check your server logs?

  War Coder : The displayed error is: HTTP 500 Internal Server Error

  Ferdinand Beyer : Well then check your server logs to see what server-side PHP error has occurred!

  Ferdinand Beyer : Oh, make sure to disable the 'Show friendly HTTP errors' setting in IE!

  War Coder : the code is already hosted on a shared hosting space. can i access the server log?

• Try this:

  // empty output buffer
  while (ob_get_level()) {
      ob_end_clean();
  }
  if (ini_get('output_buffering')) {
      ini_get('output_buffering', false);
  }
  
  // function to encode quoted-string tokens
  function rfc2822_quoteString($string) {
      return '"'.preg_replace('/[^\x00-\x0C\x0E-\x21\x23-\x5B\x5D-\x7F]/', '\\\$0', $string).'"';
  }
  
  // HTTP headers
  header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
  header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename='.rfc2822_quoteString($dname.'.mp3'));
  header('Content-Length: '.filesize($secretfile));
  
  // send file
  readfile($secretfile);
  exit;