[John Robben]

Loading these 2 packages fixed the avatar cropping problem on our site
php5-curl 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18 CURL module for php5
php5-gd 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18 GD module for php5

[John Robben]

Update:
I also repeated the process above with the default buddypress theme activated and the problem issues were the same.

I also found from a post a couple of years ago that it could be that there was not a GD image package installed on the server. We have the following installed:

GD Graphics Library version 2
GD is a graphics library. It allows your code to quickly draw images
complete with lines, arcs, text, multiple colours, cut and paste from
other images, flood fills, and write out the result as a PNG file.
This is particularly useful in World Wide Web applications, where PNG is
one of the formats accepted for inline images by most browsers.
.
This is the runtime package of the library, built with XPM (X pixmap)
and fontconfig support.
Homepage: http://www.libgd.org/
Original-Maintainer: GD team
Package libgd2-xpm
Class K-O
Version 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg-3.1ubuntu1
Vendor Ubuntu Core Developers
Architecture amd64

[John Robben]

I am having the same problem:

I am trying to upload a picture from my computer for an avatar. Size at 50×50 and 100×100 , 300×150 the pictures upload fine, then the crop picture button and select box, after expanding the selection box for cropping ( the section to be cropped shows up next to picture) clicking crop picture button, refreshes the screen and produces this error .. There was a problem cropping your avatar, please try uploading it again. Tried this multiple times in both current versions of FF and Chrome. Same results.

ps. I had buddypress media plugin installed after deleting the problem was the same.

A bit more background, tracked back the location of the avatar pictures – wp-content/uploads/avatars ; The owner and group on the dir, subdir, and files are siteower and siteowner just like all of the other folders and files – the directory was set to 755 and files to 644; there were jpgs in my avatar folder for all my attempts at adding an avatar. Just to see what happened I changed all the files to 755 and attempted another upload, same error and the uploaded file had the permission set at 644.
Process details:
The upload worked , then the crop function fired and after including the full 100×100 image in crop selection and clicking crop. The Same “here was a problem cropping your avatar, please try uploading it again.” Error came up again.

Any suggestions?

System info:

Infinity Version: 1.1a
Developer Mode: Disabled
BuddyPress: 1.6.1
MySQL: 5.1.66
Permalinks: custom
PHP: 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18
WordPress: 3.4.2
WordPress multisite: no