Recently installed ZP and all was working fine. Have been configuring admin and checking front-end results diligently. Suddenly I get this on the index page:
[Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /zp-core/functions-db-MySQL.php]
and page will not complete loading.

My forum search shows various fatal errors but did not see any specific to this file. Any ideas?

My Install Specs -----------------------------
Zenphoto version 1.4.1.6 [8326] (Official Build)
Current locale setting: en_US.UTF8
Current gallery theme: zpmasonry_v1.4.1
PHP version: 5.3.8
Graphics support: PHP GD library bundled (2.0.34 compatible)
PHP memory limit: 96M (Note: Your server might allocate less!)
MySQL version: 5.0.92

I do not know what might cause that, but I suggest you do a database refresh from the admin pages and see if it helps. What, if anything, is displayed from the theme before the error?

I can offer a guess since you use zpMasonry:

Do you upload very large images? If so, the image generation of the slideshow on the frontpage may be to much for the server on initial image discovery since it is trying to resize many large images at once. Try reducing the number of images displayed in the slideshow via theme options, upload smaller image sizes, or increase your PHP script execution limit.

sbillard - I did already try the database refresh to no avail.

gjr - Most images are less than 500KB. As I'm still in setup stage, there are only 19 images totaling less than 4MB. The random images on the home page only uses 8 images.
The only thing I didn't understand was you comment about script execution limit. Is that an option in ZP?

Okay, this is odd, or maybe not from someone else's perspective. I reduced the "frontpage slideshow count" from 8 to 5, and suddenly the page loads fine.

So I tried 6 and it loaded. Tried 7 and it took just a moment longer. Set it back to 8 and the problem returns.

These are not large file sizes, so what could cause this? I'd really like the option of adding a higher count.

I'm using a mix of dummy/filler images in GIF and JPG format.

Most images are less than 500KB

Not the filesize but the dimensions matter! (See the troubleshooting). Technically a 100kb image can have 6000x6000px (depending on the compression) and that will most likey cause every standard (shared) host server to time out especially if he has to generate several of these in the row.

The largest file dimension is 1600x1200. Would this be considered too taxing on the system? I figured between 1000 and 1600 px would be a moderate file dimension.

As a basis for comparison, what pixel size do people commonly use in ZP?

Whether it is too taxing on not is something you will have to determine. If things work reasonably then it is not. If not then the image is too big. This is always a server dependent issue, not a Zenphoto issue.

For me, however, there is absolutely no reason to upload an image larger than about 800x600. Few people have monitors large enough to display an image and associated other page stuff much larger than this.

People will have larger monitors, but especially people with large(r) monitors do not use browser in full screen mode (up to 10.7 Mac OS for example did not even have that!) as they often have several programs open at once. Also there are of course mobile usages advancing that have even quite smaller screens (and bandwidth) at all.

I also had this timeout error if there were less images in the album as was set in the theme options.

Eg. The album only had two images but the frontpage slideshow was set to 5