phpMyAdmin Error 504 Gateway Timeout Reloaded

Question

I have an immensely annoying problem with my phpmyadmin. It appeared out of the blue. No changes that I am aware of have been been to my dedicated server.

When i try to execute any query or show a view that takes more than 1 second to execute in my browser (firefox on windows 7, ie behaves the same), i get the following error:

Error in Processing Request 
Error code: 504 
Error text: Gateway Timeout

the queries can or don't need to have count(*). they work on tables with 5m - 50m rows.

sometimes the same error shows up when i click any link in phpmyadmin, such as "Browse", "Server" or "Structure".

php scripts cronned to run much more intensive queries on the same dedicated server work flawlessly.

Here are some technical details:

Database server
•Server: Localhost via UNIX socket
•Server type: MySQL
•Server version: 5.5.38-0ubuntu0.14.04.1-log - (Ubuntu)
•Protocol version: 10
•User: XXX@localhost
• Server charset:  UTF-8 Unicode (utf8)  

Web server
•Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu)
•Database client version: libmysql - 5.5.38
•PHP extension: mysqli Documentation

phpMyAdmin
•Version information: 4.2.3deb1.trusty~ppa.1

I followed some clues online and I tried adding the last two line in my conf.inc.php file (see below), but no changes, also after restarting the server:

<?php
/**
 * Debian local configuration file
 *
 * This file overrides the settings made by phpMyAdmin interactive setup
 * utility.
 *
 * For example configuration see
 *   /usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin/examples/config.sample.inc.php
 * or
 *   /usr/share/doc/phpmyadmin/examples/config.manyhosts.inc.php
 *
 * NOTE: do not add security sensitive data to this file (like passwords)
 * unless you really know what you're doing. If you do, any user that can
 * run PHP or CGI on your webserver will be able to read them. If you still
 * want to do this, make sure to properly secure the access to this file
 * (also on the filesystem level).
 */

// Load secret generated on postinst
include('/var/lib/phpmyadmin/blowfish_secret.inc.php');

// Load autoconf local config
include('/var/lib/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php');

/**
 * Server(s) configuration
 */
$i = 0;
// The $cfg['Servers'] array starts with $cfg['Servers'][1].  Do not use $cfg['Servers'][0].
// You can disable a server config entry by setting host to ''.
$i++;

/**
 * Read configuration from dbconfig-common
 * You can regenerate it using: dpkg-reconfigure -plow phpmyadmin
 */
if (is_readable('/etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php')) {
    require('/etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php');
} else {
    error_log('phpmyadmin: Failed to load /etc/phpmyadmin/config-db.php.'
        . ' Check group www-data has read access.');
}

/* Configure according to dbconfig-common if enabled */
if (!empty($dbname)) {
    /* Authentication type */
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';
    /* Server parameters */
    if (empty($dbserver)) $dbserver = 'localhost';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = $dbserver;

    if (!empty($dbport) || $dbserver != 'localhost') {
        $cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'tcp';
        $cfg['Servers'][$i]['port'] = $dbport;
    }
    //$cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress'] = false;
    /* Select mysqli if your server has it */
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysqli';
    /* Optional: User for advanced features */
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = $dbuser;
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = $dbpass;
    /* Optional: Advanced phpMyAdmin features */
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = $dbname;
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = 'pma_bookmark';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = 'pma_relation';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = 'pma_table_info';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = 'pma_table_coords';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = 'pma_pdf_pages';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = 'pma_column_info';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = 'pma_history';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['designer_coords'] = 'pma_designer_coords';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['tracking'] = 'pma_tracking';
    $cfg['Servers'][$i]['userconfig'] = 'pma_userconfig';

    /* Uncomment the following to enable logging in to passwordless accounts,
     * after taking note of the associated security risks. */
    // $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = TRUE;

    /* Advance to next server for rest of config */
    $i++;
}

/* Authentication type */
//$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie';
/* Server parameters */
//$cfg['Servers'][$i]['host'] = 'localhost';
//$cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'tcp';
//$cfg['Servers'][$i]['compress'] = false;
/* Select mysqli if your server has it */
//$cfg['Servers'][$i]['extension'] = 'mysql';
/* Optional: User for advanced features */
 //$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controluser'] = 'pma';
 //$cfg['Servers'][$i]['controlpass'] = 'pmapass';
/* Optional: Advanced phpMyAdmin features */
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pmadb'] = 'phpmyadmin';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['bookmarktable'] = 'pma_bookmark';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['relation'] = 'pma_relation';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_info'] = 'pma_table_info';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['table_coords'] = 'pma_table_coords';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['pdf_pages'] = 'pma_pdf_pages';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['column_info'] = 'pma_column_info';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['history'] = 'pma_history';
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['designer_coords'] = 'pma_designer_coords';
/* Uncomment the following to enable logging in to passwordless accounts,
 * after taking note of the associated security risks. */
// $cfg['Servers'][$i]['AllowNoPassword'] = TRUE;

/*
 * End of servers configuration
 */

/*
 * Directories for saving/loading files from server
 */
$cfg['UploadDir'] = '';
$cfg['SaveDir'] = '';

//$cfg['AllowArbitraryServer'] = true;
$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = 86400;
$cfg['MaxExactCount'] = 0;
$cfg['MaxExactCountViews'] = 0;

Please help me.

Answer 1

I added the following line to the file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf in the http{} block:

• fastcgi_read_timeout 360;

Restart nginx

• sudo service nginx restart

Good luck!!! Remember to like me. Thanks you so much!

Answer 2

In the end, I figured out this is not an issue on my server, but my then current internet connection provider simply was cancelling (sending this error message) all https requests that take more than 10 seconds to complete.