408 Request Time-out

[32209]

I got a 408 request time out within the last hour:

"This request takes too long to process, it is timed out by the server. If it should not be timed out, please contact administrator of this web site to increase 'Connection Timeout'.

Powered By LiteSpeed Web Server"

Where should I go, within control panel, etc., to increase the 'Connection Timeout'?

note: I am experiencing one other "issue", that started recently, which also seems to be related to "Connection Timeout', although I do not get an error message in the browser window when that issue occurs.

[Tony]

Usually this happens when your PHP script is connecting to some external service and it's just sitting there unable to connection which then causes a 408 connection timeout on the webserver. So you cannot increase the connection timeout and doing so does not even make sense since a page taking 120 seconds to load or whatever is excessive anyways.

[32209]

Hi Tony,

Thankyou for replying.

Neither of the issues I am referring to in this post involve a "page" loading that is available for visitors to view. The pages involve "administrative/management" aspects of the website.

Considering that I have completed the tasks, which now seem to be timing out, many times in the past, the same way, without encountering the "Connection Timeout" issue, increasing the timeout period seemed, at the least, a very reasonable question to ask. Besides, increasing the connection timeout is, exactly, what the alert message displayed indicated I should ask about.

I read the timeout message and followed its "instructions". I did not try to be "presumptive" in this particular instance. I just read the timeout message and did what it seemed to recommend.

Again, this is not a "page" available for visitors to the website to see. The tasks that seem to be timing out involve, more or less, routine aspects of the site's administration and management.

note: Yes, I am, acutely, aware of the wisdom in keeping page load times low for pages I expect web surfer's to be able to view. In fact, it is common for me to reduce image sizes, preload images, etcetera, in an effort to offer a webpage that loads fast. Where I can not reduce total page load time to 10 seconds or less, at 56k, which can, for me, be extraordinarily difficult with certain "kinds" of sites, I usually ensure that a visitor to the website will, at least, have some content to read, etcetera, while the remainder of the page, unbeknown to the vistor, loads. So, no, I do not expect a site visitor to wait 120 seconds before they can see anything on my webpage; I probably do not even expect them to wait 20 seconds. 10 seconds is, probably, starting to test the patience of most people casually surfing the web.

Usually, I even have some sort of caching running if the site in question is Wordpress, like WP Cache, for instance, in order to reduce "load". If Litespeed did not "compress" I would, probably, attempt to do some sort of gzip or compression myself. I was, to some extent, doing that, gzip, at a previous host, for a site that is now hosted using Hawkhost, but I abandoned it, back then, because of what I understood to be differences in how various Internet browsers might handle such "pages".

[Tony]

Increasing the timeout limit in this case will not fix it trust me on this 120 seconds and not a single piece of data was sent to the client. This is why you get the 408 connection timeout. We typically see this when you're connecting to some external service on the page and it's not connecting. So maybe it's like this for example

Connect wordpress.com

Rest of page

It sits there hanging on wordpress.com you'd get a 408 timeout because the rest of the execution would not happen. I would check your error logs it usually provides clues to this. The fact it worked before doesn't mean much we've had users connecting to a service for a year and ignored a notice about a change of url and it broke. Or they did something and they got blocked by the service. I hate the idea that somehow because it worked at one time it must be us and it's not a script error or something like that.

[32209]

I hate the idea that somehow because it worked at one time it must be us and it's not a script error or something like that.

Hi, again, Tony,

Thanyou for replying.

Tony I always try to word things carefully.

I can not escape the conclusion that, in my opinion, you may have misinterpreted what I have said here, regarding this issue, when it comes to "bla**". In fact, that is just it, I did not say anything at all about bla**. In my opinion, you are taking "ownership" of something I never, specifically, accused you of. In my opinion you are taking it personal.

I have not explicitly "bla***" you or Hawkhost for this. I mean, really Tony, I have not done that anywhere in this thread, nor was assigning bla** my intention.

As I indicated, I got a timeout message/alert, period. I made queries that the alert itself indicated I should make. I did not lay bla** on any entity.

I tried to describe all the circumstances surrounding the problem in detail so, if anyone on the forums wanted to suggest something, they would know as much as I know about the problem without having to post a reply asking me for more details and, then, wait for me to respond. So, when I write "...I have completed the tasks, which now seem to be timing out, many times in the past, the same way, without encountering the Connection Timeout issue..." I mean exactly what I typed. That quoted statement does not have "and so I bla** you" attached to the end of it.

Again, Tony I was trying to, hopefully, get more information about possible actions that I can take to avoid that particular problem in the future and, maybe more importantly, I was trying to find out if there was a "timeout" setting in Control Panel that I can change BECAUSE I do not know if there is one. If I do not know something I will, at some point, probably, ask "someone" who I think will know, if the solution continues to *elude me. In my opinion you may be doing the equivalent of "putting words in my mouth". I did not, and have not, bla** anyone in this particular thread.

I am, with regard to this problem, someone who does not know about this type of issue trying to get a reply from someone who does know about this issue. Period. That is what forums are for, I think.

Further, I did not and have not, at this point, made a support ticket regarding this.

Increasing the timeout limit in this case will not fix it trust me on this...

Again, I was not necessarily insisting that increasing the timeout will fix it. I simply "explained", in depth, that the timeout message, of which I do have a screenshot, indicated that I should ask about increasing the timeout limit.

Tony, your skill and knowledge level, with regard to this subject matter, is far greater than mine. In fact, I am willing to say that I know virtually nothing about this subject matter compared to you and, probably, most others on this forum. And I am not trying to be ingratiating.

I do not see how I should be apprehensive when it comes to asking questions about, and describing, issues I encounter on the forums or via support for fear that someone will think I am bla**** them or Hawkhost.

Tony, you wrote "trust me". Well, trust me when I say I know how "stres****" things can get. In my opinion, you seem "on ed**", defe*****, and taking of***** where none was intended. That could of course, in my opinion, also be because, "pressed for time", you are "skimming" my posts and, prematurely, concluding certain things w/out reading, word for word, everything I wrote.

*For example, I am not a person who will drive around lost for hours, refusing to stop and ask someone familiar with the area for directions. If no solution seems forthcoming I will, pretty quickly, ask someone who knows.

[Tony]

You cannot increase the timeout limit on your end and we will not increase it. Increasing it also makes the server much more susceptible to denial of service attacks.

So how you avoid this error is find out why your script is not sending any output to the client. I would check the error_log file wherever the PHP script is executing. It should provide insight as to what is happening.

[speedturtle]

A WP user had the same error while trying to save his post so he changed the post title to a single word, saved the post, published post, and re-edited the title back to its original. It was probably a bad character in the title that caused the error.

There are many issues that could cause a "408 request time out" error. I'd recommend you submit a support ticket with details on the problem. The support staff are quite good and could probably solve the issue more quickly.