Execution Timeout Issue:
After six minutes (360 seconds) of execution a SharePoint page will timeout. Now for most situations a six minute execution timeout seems very generous. However, it is likely that this default execution timeout may be reached during such tasks as Feature Activation. Features are activated from a SharePoint Application Page and unless specially coded (not likely) a Feature will execute code in a synchronous manor. Features containing code to create nested site hierarchies can be quite time consuming.
Solution:
SharePoint uses a web.config located under:
Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
to set the default executionTimeout. The default executionTimeout (See Below) value is 360 seconds or six minutes. Increasing this value will allow our Feature code more time to complete execution before timing out.
Sample Web.Config
<system.web>
<compilation batch="false" batchTimeout="600" maxBatchSize="10000" maxBatchGeneratedFileSize="10000" />
<httpHandlers>
<add verb="*" path="*.aspx" type="System.Web.UI.PageHandlerFactory, System.Web, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
</httpHandlers>
<customErrors mode="On" />
<httpRuntime executionTimeout="360" />
<globalization fileEncoding="utf-8" />
</system.web>