PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 0 seconds exceeded
Posted on: 09 December 2011
I've got a pretty long-running script. In our live environment this runs under command line PHP, but for convenience on my dev machine I just run it through Apache.
Initially I got an error
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded
No problem - just up the max_execution_time parameter to zero in my php.ini to give an infinite execution time, restart Apache, and start again. Trouble was, after about ten minutes, I got a slightly different error:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 0 seconds exceeded
Hang on - zero is supposed to be infinite!
A bit more digging reveals that this is in fact an incorrect error message, and it's a different setting which has been exceeded - max_input_time. Setting this to -1 (why is this -1 for unlimited, while max_execution_time is 0 for unlimited? Answers on a postcard...) sorted me out. Thanks to Jason Hinkle for pointing the way on that one...