execution time

I have a slight problem and was wondering if anyone could help. I have a php script that runs every 30 minutes. It takes the contents of a directory (which is constantly being updated) and dumps them into a mysql database. Recently this directory has become increasingly large and the php script only updates a portion of it before it stops execution. To run the php script I use a lynx command in a crontab. I'm running suse linux and apache on both machines (the machine containting the directory and the other machine containing the database). I've tried changing the max execution time in php.ini file but it appears to have no affect. When I took the php script and divided it into portions and ran them one at a time it worked (except for one portion of the script). the execution time of the script doesn't matter to me, I just need it to run. When I run the php script through a browser, and the script doesn't complete, I get a 'page cannot be displayed' message (while I am expecting a 'fatal error, exceeded max execution time' error message). Maybe it could be fixed by using something other than lynx to run the php script internally, but I don't know of any alternatives. hope someone can help.. -petur