Serving large files with PHP

Question

So I am trying to serve large files via a PHP script, they are not in a web accessible directory, so this is the best way I can figure to provide access to them.

The

Answer 1

Strange, neither fpassthru() nor readfile() did it for me, always had a memory error. I resorted to use passthru() without the 'f':

$name = 'mybigfile.zip';
// send the right headers
header("Content-Type: application/zip");
header("Content-Length: " . filesize($name));
// dump the file and stop the script
passthru('/bin/cat '.$filename);
exit;

this execs 'cat' Unix command and send its output to the browser.

comment for slim: the reason you just don't put a symlink to somewhere is webspace is SECURITY.