Not directly connected with Elgg at all. I just thought to mention it as it cost me 2 days to figure out why usage of set_time_limit() suddenly results in fatal errors within my test environment (when used within Elgg code but strangely not when testing the usage separately!).

Finally (!!!) came across the bug report at https://bugs.xdebug.org/view.php?id=1424. It seems the bug is in xdebug 2.5.3 - I will call it the "Bloody Mary" bug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Mary_(folklore)). :-)

Bug is fixed in xdebug 2.5.4.