Increase PHP script execution time with Nginx

If you have a large WordPress setup or a server with limited resources, then you will often see the “504 Gateway Time-out” error.

You can follow the steps given below to increase the timeout value. PHP default is 30s.

Changes in php.ini

If you want to change the max execution time limit for PHP scripts from 30 seconds (default) to 300 seconds.

vim /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini

Set…

max_execution_time = 300

In Apache, applications running PHP as a module above would have sufficed. But in our case we need to make this change at 2 more places.

Changes in PHP-FPM

This is only needed if you have already un-commented request_terminate_timeout parameter before. It is commented by default, and takes value of max_execution_time found in php.ini

Edit…

vim /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Set…

request_terminate_timeout = 300

Changes in Nginx Config

To increase the time limit for example.com by

vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

location ~ \.php$ {
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_read_timeout 300; 
}

If you want to increase time limit for all sites on your server, you can edit the main nginx.conf file:

vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add the following in http{..} section

http {
    #...
        fastcgi_read_timeout 300; 
    #...
}

Reload PHP-FPM & Nginx

Don’t forget to do this so that the changes you have made will come into effect:

service php5-fpm reload
service nginx reload