In certain circumstances, Safari will hang when uploading documents, eventually causing the server to throw a read timeout error. This has been tested again Safari 3.1.1 but apparently happens with earlier versions too.
You can tell if you are experiencing this bug if:
- files upload are hanging and eventually time out; this may happen intermittently
- if you wait 1 (or 5 depending) minutes and then submit/upload, it works
- you are likely working a fast local intranet connect rather than a slower internet connection
- the form works fine in other browsers such as Firefox
This bug is ably described here (http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/webkit-unassigned/2007-January/026203.html) and apparently is something happening at a very low level of the TCP/IP stream. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't really seem to believe this is a bug (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5760).
I do not have a workaround for this, except by disabling Keep-Alive on Safari.
See also: