mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 45 seconds --> Premature end of script headers: admin.php

Question

I'm getting a 500 Error when trying to save a rather large entry. (By "rather large" I mean it includes a 4x9 Matrix, 31x4 Matrix, 5x3 Matrix, Tag, and few text fields.) The Publish screen hangs for several seconds after I click Save and then goes to the error, without saving the entry (as far as I can tell).

The error logs include the following messages:

[Mon Mar 18 16:44:18 2013] [warn] [client 75.148.191.126] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 45 seconds, referer: http://xxx/admin.php?S=dd4fca62fd66ca80ad02acde5f1ae08bb8e947d0&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=3&entry_id=1512&filter=YToxOntzOjE1OiJyZXR1cm5fdG9femVuYnUiO3M6MToieSI7fQ==
[Mon Mar 18 16:44:18 2013] [error] [client 75.148.191.126] Premature end of script headers: admin.php, referer: http://xxx/admin.php?S=dd4fca62fd66ca80ad02acde5f1ae08bb8e947d0&D=cp&C=content_publish&M=entry_form&channel_id=3&entry_id=1512&filter=YToxOntzOjE1OiJyZXR1cm5fdG9femVuYnUiO3M6MToieSI7fQ==

I Googled around a bit and couldn't find anything very conclusive. Have any of yall seen this before? Is it akin to a MySQL "server has gone away" error?

Answer 1

That error is specific to mod_fcgid, not PHP itself. If you're using the current version of mod_fcgid then you will need to set the FcgidIOTimeout directive (ref), otherwise you'll need the old directive, IPCCommTimeout.

Answer 2

Thanks for the pointers, all. In this case, I ended up having to increase several timeout limits:

First, to address the original fastCGI error:

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

FcgidIOTimeout 90

This fixed the PHP/fastCGI error, but revealed a 500 Error coming from Nginx timing out. The fix:

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

keepalive_timeout  125;
proxy_read_timeout 125;
proxy_connect_timeout 125;
fastcgi_read_timeout 125;

This fixed the issue some of the time, but intermittently I would get the MySQL "MySQL server has gone away" error, which required one more tweak:

/etc/my.conf

wait_timeout = 120

Then, just for funsies, I went ahead and upped my PHP memory limit, just in case:

/etc/php.ini

memory_limit = 256M

Answer 3

For most cases solutions is incising max_execution_time as Anna told (you can also setup it in php.ini as max_execution_time 120).

But you can also try to add next lines into your .htaccess

<IfModule mod_fcgid.c>
IdleTimeout 3600
ProcessLifeTime 7200
MaxProcessCount 64
DefaultMaxClassProcessCount 8
IPCConnectTimeout 300
IPCCommTimeout 7200
BusyTimeout 300
</IfModule>

in case if is will not helps - try to add it into you vhost, because on many hosting this option is closed in .htaccess