Prevent nginx 504 Gateway timeout using PHP set_time_limit()

There are several ways in which you can set the timeout for php-fpm. In /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf I added this line:

request_terminate_timeout = 180

Also, in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default I added the following line to the location block of the server in question:

fastcgi_read_timeout 180;

The entire location block looks like this:

location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_read_timeout 180;
    include fastcgi_params;
} 

Now just restart php-fpm and nginx and there should be no more timeouts for requests taking less than 180 seconds.

Try this link, it has a better solution on how to fix this. So the steps are:

1. Open your nginx.conf file located in /etc/nginx directory.

2. Add this below piece of code under http { section:

   client_header_timeout 3000;
   client_body_timeout 3000;
   fastcgi_read_timeout 3000;
   client_max_body_size 32m;
   fastcgi_buffers 8 128k;
   fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
   

   Note: If its already present , change the values according.

3. Reload Nginx and php5-fpm.

   $ service nginx reload
   $ service php5-fpm reload
   

   If the error persists, consider increasing the values.