Set max_execution_time in PHP CLI

The documentation says that when running in command line mode, the default is 0 (unlimited). It doesn't say that you cannot override it:

set_time_limit(10); // this way
ini_set('max_execution_time', 10); // or this way

Edit: I just tried it myself, and it works as expected.

F:devwww>c:php -f index.php
PHP Fatal error:  Maximum execution time of 2 seconds exceeded in F:devwwwindex.php on line 3

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 2 seconds exceeded in F:devwwwindex.php on line 3

The shell/OS imposed limit is usually one or two hundred thousand characters.

getconf ARG_MAX will give you the maximum input limit for a command. On the Debian system I currently have a terminal open on this returns 131072 which is 128*1024. The limit is reduced by your environment variables and if my memory serves me correctly these are passed in the same structure by the shell, though that will only take off a few hundred characters in most cases. To find an approximation of this value run env | wc -c - this suggests 325 characters at the current time on this login on this machine.

Scripts are likely to permit this full length, but it is not unlikely that other utilities will impose their own limits either intentionally or through design issues. There may also be artificial limits to how long an individual argument on a long command line can be, and/or how long a path to a file can be.

From the docs:

By de, nginx removes all environment variables inherited from its parent process except the TZ variable.

As you mentioned, you've tried setting them in the fastcgi config, which is, I think, the best you can do in this situation. For others' benefit this is done like this:

location ~ .php$ {

    # ...
    fastcgi_param APPLICATION_ENV "production";
    fastcgi_param MY_OTHER_ENV "things";
    include fastcgi_params;

    # ...
}

I understand the aversion to 'copy-paste', and agree! You should look at using a configuration management tool such as Puppet, SaltStack, Ansible to manage your config files. That way you can easily sync your environment variable list between all required locations. Let me know if you need more info about this.