max execution time...

[Anon]

lets say to throttle load i want to use a 30 second max execution time (or for whatever reason, it MUST stay at 30 in php.ini)

now i have a script that will run nightly using php as executable that will take roughly 5 minutes to run. can i change that global variable or in some other way tell PHP, "hey, i'm cool, let me run a little long and i'll give you a dollar..."

[Anon]

There's an easy function you can use called set_time_limit().

see:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.set-time-limit.php

In the top of your script for the cronjob just put this line first:

<?php
set_time_limit(300);
?>