Custom 504 page not working

Question

In the software I developed, the user can send a XLS file that the PHP uses to insert rows to the database. Usually one file has 1500 lines and results in 7000 lines in the database. The process usually takes 5 to 7 minutes to complete.

After sometime I get a 504 Gateway Time-out error. I did a research and find out that the solution is to increase the max execution time. I tried that and nothing, it's like the configuration is ignored.

max_execution_time = 600
max_input_time = 600

Then I tried to set this directly at the PHP, using the functions ignore_user_abort and set_time_limit. Again, it did not work.

set_time_limit(0);         //never time out
ignore_user_abort(true);   //ignore abort

After this I gave up, and decided to make a custom error page to explain why the error occurred and then redirect back to the control panel. So, I went to my .htaccess that have the following content:

# Turn on the RewriteEngine
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymLinks +Includes
Options -Indexes
IndexIgnore */*
# Rules
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|images|robots\.txt)

RewriteRule . index.php?/$0 [L]

And added the following statement:

ErrorDocument 504 http://domain/erros/timeout/

When the error occurs again, instead of redirecting to the URL, it shows the default error page.

UPDATE

I use dreamhost shared hosting.

Answer 1

According to the documentation it should not be a problem http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Creating_custom_error_pages

I think you need to use a local path like

ErrorDocument 504 /cgi-bin/error.php?code=504