504 Gateway Time-out media temple

Question

I am constantly getting 504 Gateway Errors when my php script needs to run for longer than 60 seconds.

I am on Media Temple on a dedicated server. I have contacted Media Temple and they have been helpful but none of their suggestions seem to work for me. I was told to edit this file.

/etc/httpd/conf.d/fcgid.conf

which I have...see below

LoadModule fcgid_module modules/mod_fcgid.so

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>

<IfModule !mod_fastcgi.c>
    AddHandler fcgid-script fcg fcgi fpl
</IfModule>

  FcgidIPCDir /var/run/mod_fcgid/sock
  FcgidProcessTableFile /var/run/mod_fcgid/fcgid_shm
  FcgidIdleTimeout 300
  FcgidMaxRequestLen 1073741824
  FcgidProcessLifeTime 10000
  FcgidMaxProcesses 64
  FcgidMaxProcessesPerClass 15
  FcgidMinProcessesPerClass 0
  FcgidConnectTimeout 600
  FcgidIOTimeout 600
  FcgidInitialEnv RAILS_ENV production
  FcgidIdleScanInterval 600

</IfModule>

I have tried to max everything as much as I can. To test this I am just running the function below.

function test504(){
    @set_time_limit(0);
    sleep(60);
    echo "true";
}

Sleep will work on any value below 60 seconds, but anything more results in a 504 Gateway Error

my phpinfo(); outputs

max_execution_time 600
max_input_time 180

I have seen a few posts on increasing the fastcgi_connect_timeout setting, but have no idea where to find this on Media Temple.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

** UPDATE **

After chatting with support I have been told I need to edit nginx.conf and was directed to this post http://blog.secaserver.com/2011/10/nginx-gateway-time-out/

I can't find any of the values in my server settings. client_header_timeout client_body_timeout send_timeout fastcgi_read_timeout

my nginx.conf file looks like this

#error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log  info;

#pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    #log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
    #                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
    #                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    #access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;
    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  120;
    #tcp_nodelay        on;

    #gzip  on;
    #gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";

    server_tokens off;

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

** UPDATE **

I managed to get this sorted out and added a blog post on how I fixed it.

http://devsforrest.com/116/boost-settings-on-media-temple-for-maximum-settings

Envoy

I think this is a new setting because I have never had a problem with their older servers but had a new server I turned on and ran into this. Your post really helped a lot. My app is running in Apache Module mode and this still fixed the problem. Really helpful! – Throaty

Hey @Envoy - your last update works! Post it as your answer and get credit for finding the solution. – Skedaddle

I'd suggest you to refactor your application to remove a need to run a script for more than 200ms. You'll maybe need to move some heavy logic to the background. Use any of the following technologies to help you with that: AJAX, Message queues, memcache, flag files. – Clingstone

Answer 1

I too had the same issue and I solved it by editing nginx.conf file. In most cases, this can be fixed by adding / increasing the send_timeout directive in nginx.conf.

Find your nginx.conf file (usually located at /usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf or sometimes /etc/nginx/sites-available/default), open it using nano or any other text editor, and add the following lines between the http { } so it looks like:

http {
include       mime.types;
default_type  application/octet-stream;

#log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
#                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
#                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

#access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

sendfile        on;
#tcp_nopush     on;
#keepalive_timeout  0;
keepalive_timeout  120;
#tcp_nodelay        on;

#gzip  on;
#gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";

server_tokens off;

send_timeout 10m;

include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

In my case, I had to increase some other directives like:

client_header_timeout 10m;
client_body_timeout 10m;
send_timeout 10m;
fastcgi_read_timeout 10m;

too.

Once you've edited the file, just reload nginx with:

kill -HUP `ps -ef | grep nginx | grep master | awk {'print $2'}`

or

sudo service nginx restart

That should fix it.

(I found the directives here: http://blog.secaserver.com/2011/10/nginx-gateway-time-out/ )

PS: I saw the comment by the OP with a link to their blog but I thought adding the relevant information here might help.

Beetle