Error when starting listings

[atnicolae]

Version 9.9.4

When starting listings, I get the launch control and after the checkup I click on “start listings”.

The images seem to upload, I see the counter on my network showing upload, then it lags around 80% of the bar and after a few seconds, I get the error “Could not upload pictures to GarageSale’s picture service: The request timed out.” … The message is not “always” “timed out”, sometimes I get something like error 904 or 504?

It seems to happen only when I post listings around 11PM to 1AM US eastern time.

Mac M1 Max is working fine, internet and everything is working fine, I can load ebay, all other websites, internet speed test 350 DL 250 UP and all other stuff seems fine and I don’t have any weird setup, I’m behind a basic router at home.

dig img.iwascoding.com :

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> img.iwascoding.com

;; global options: +cmd

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 10728

;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:

; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 1232

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;img.iwascoding.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

img.iwascoding.com. 1800 IN A 65.21.22.97

;; Query time: 27 msec

;; SERVER: 1.1.1.1#53(1.1.1.1)

;; WHEN: Mon Mar 16 00:28:08 EDT 2026

;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 63

…

Any clue as to what I can do to go around this issue?

If I keep trying, eventually it works, and if not, the next morning, like butter, it works.

I just find it odd, unless the server has maintenance or restarts around those hours?

[atnicolae]

And now that I posted this, trying to give as much details, it started working again…..

Believe me! I am not lying! ha ha ha.

[vjl]

Try using ping when you can’t upload - see if you are able to ping img.iwascoding.com - if so, that at least means the server is up. But if it is down for 2 hours a day, that means images will not be displayed on customers’ listings who use their image server within their template [the ebay images will still show up, but the listing description might take a while to load while ebay attempts to contact the img.iwascoding machine]. Hopefully it is something else, as I would think a 2-hour window would not be good; maybe there is maintenance going on which doesn’t allow uploading during that time, but the system is still serving images to eBay listings.

[atnicolae]

I haven’t been disciplined enough lately and I make it up by doing some easy listings and noticed this pattern at night as I try to post at least 3 listings per day. I’ll try again tonight to see if its recurring.

I only opened the case because a pattern is starting to show but it could also be some bad luck or Sunday night maintenance and my mind is playing tricks on me.

I’ll report back with the ping but in my mind the “dig” function acted similarly since I saw it on another post from a few years back.

Thank you, I’ll keep you posted!

[vjl]

The dig command deals with DNS, which can be cached and rarely ever touches the server in question; it looks up the domain, but it does that via DNS, and doesn’t actually need the server to be live for dig to return a result. Just FYI.

[atnicolae]

Thanks!!

I found this about a similar issue by someone else, which seems to stem from their ISP. (Time out uploading images - #34)

I have some listings that I’ll try starting late tonight and i’ll let you know.

Based on your knowledge, I’m guessing you might work for GarageSale, but either way, thank you for your kind and rapid support!

[vjl]

Nope - 100% just a customer! The only ones that work for GS have cartoon looking avatars and you can see their names in the Announcements forum. I’m just an eBay seller [also on the east coast of the US] and programmer, but don’t contribute to GS other than sending bug reports and headaches their way.

EDIT: whoops, there is no announcements forum! They post here with new beta builds and their names are, Kristian, Ilja, and Paul. They also do answer tech support questions and I think it’s Paul who monitors the GS image server, so he may know more about any maintenance schedule and downtime.

[atnicolae]

Well then, you sir are a gentleman and a scholar! ha ha ha Thanks for your assistance with this!

Great news… all worked since then, I got a ping constantly going for a while and on 33158 requests, only 1 dropped… so I guess it was a spur of the moment connectivity bug.

Have an awesome day and thanks again!

[vjl]

Just for future pinging - I would stop a ping after a few seconds - once you see a good, consistent response, after about 10 seconds, it is good to end a ping, otherwise the server being pinged might see it as a network attack. It is a useful network tool, but having it run for a long time to one server, could be interpreted as an attack by the server.