OK, I found them now, made the changes and merged them.

I see them on
https://bitbucket.org/jendrikseipp/downward/commits/16d44a564e05f5dfd2b37ab93bdb8b5cbb0bd3e6.

I can't see your changes anywhere on bitbucket and didn't get any notifications. 
Am I missing something?

Yes. I made two minor comments; otherwise, if this works for you with the
change, please merge.

Yes, this should have already been the case. The code tried to retrieve the 
external time limit again to make sure we don't raise the hard limit. I have 
created a pull request in my bitbucket clone. Did you get an invitation?

I guess the suggested fix is to use the default timeout of 1800 seconds in this
case?

If a portfolio is run without an external time limit the individual configs do 
not adhere to their timeouts. 

We already found the source of the error, this issue mainly serves for 
documentation purposes.