copying categories times out

[carin]

Copying 12 categories with 3 subcategories each (no downloads) times out after couple of seconds with:

Error
Another batch operation is still in progress. Please try it later again.

Warning
Batch process failed with following error:

max_execution_time   180 (but I dont feel that limit was hit because that did not happen on jD 1.9)

EDIT: just realised by accidentally looking at the front end the batch is somehow still going on deep in the background executing the copy comand ... should there not be a progress bar indicating the ongoing action instead of an error message?