Public side PDF throws Gateway Time Out
Blake Graham-Henderson
I'm sure this list is tired of PDF threads. I've combed over all of the
previously posted questions about PDF export and I didn't find one that
addressed this issue specifically. We have a particularly large Finding
Aid. And when the system attempt to produce a PDF for the user, it takes
awhile and eventually times out. Watching the server logs, I can see
that the server is still working on the PDF at the moment the browser
throws a time out.
I think I can conclude that the front-end doesn't tolerate the backend
taking longer than x minutes (maybe 2 minutes?) to finish the request.
Is there anything we can do about that? We're using NGINX reverse proxy
with standard settings. I'm wondering if it's in the NGINX layer or of
it's in the Java web server layer. Or maybe it's not a good idea to
increase the timeout threshold? Or maybe this has come up before and I
didn't see it in the backlog.
--
-Blake-
Conducting Magic
Will consume any data format
MOBIUS
Blake Carver
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 11:15 AM
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Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] Public side PDF throws Gateway Time Out
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Saunders, Mike
To: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] Public side PDF throws Gateway Time Out
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Before you print please think about the ENVIRONMENT
Blake Graham-Henderson
I appreciate the suggestions. I played around with various settings in various places in NGINX. It ended up being 100% NGINX. The default timeout for the PDF generation (5 minutes) at the Archivesspace level was enough for it to finish. But NGINX didn't tolerate more than 60 seconds. I'll include a heavily edited version of my NGINX config in case it's useful for someone else crawling the logs:
http {
keepalive_timeout 300s;
proxy_send_timeout 300s;
proxy_read_timeout 3000s;
send_timeout 300s;
client_header_timeout 300s;
client_body_timeout 300s;
proxy_connect_timeout 300s;
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name <public_url>;
location /oai {
proxy_pass <redacted>;
}
location / {
proxy_pass <redacted>;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
}
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
server_name <staff_url>;
location / {
proxy_pass <redacted>;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
http2 on;
server_name <staff_url>;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key;
include includes/ssl-params.conf;
include includes/proxy.conf;
location /oai {
proxy_pass <redacted>;
}
location / {
proxy_pass <redacted>;
proxy_send_timeout 300s;
proxy_read_timeout 300s;
proxy_connect_timeout 300s;
send_timeout 300s;
}
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
http2 on;
server_name <staff_url>;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key;
include includes/ssl-params.conf;
include includes/proxy.conf;
location / {
proxy_pass <redacted>;
proxy_send_timeout 300s;
proxy_read_timeout 300s;
proxy_connect_timeout 300s;
send_timeout 300s;
}
}
}
-Blake- Conducting Magic Will consume any data format MOBIUS