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 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 suffice. 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 main nginx.conf file:

vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Add following in http{..} section

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

Reload PHP-FPM & Nginx

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

service php5-fpm reload
service nginx reload

.

504 Gateway Time-out using Nginx

It is very common to see a 504 Gateway Time-out using Nginx webserver. This timeout error is generated often by a number of reasons on the backend connection that is serving content. To fix it, you will have to figure out what configuration are you using.

For Nginx + FastCGI (php-fpm), you should try to tweak nginx configuration in this way-:

Try raising max_execution_time setting in php.ini file (CentOS path is /etc/php.ini):

max_execution_time = 300

But, you should also change set request_terminate_timeout parameter (commented by default) at www.conf file from PHP-FPM:

pico -w /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Then set the variable to the same value as max_execution_time:

request_terminate_timeout = 300

Now let’s add  fastcgi_read_timeout variable inside our Nginx virtual host configuration:

location ~ .php$ {
root /var/www/sites/nginxtips.com;
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_read_timeout 300;
}

Then restart nginx:

service nginx reload

For Nginx as Proxy for Apache web server, this is what you have to try:

Add this variables to nginx.conf file:

  proxy_connect_timeout       600;
  proxy_send_timeout          600;
  proxy_read_timeout          600;
  send_timeout                600;

Then restart nginx:

service nginx reload

.