I’m training system administrators next week so this article is going out earlier than usual.
System administrators are able to perform a lot of operations/changes while users are using the system.
Some changes are so significant that users cannot use the system while the changes are being made e.g. when a column is added to a table.
Admin mode is a special mode that can be enabled for these types of changes. This IBM blog article provides step by step advice on how to start/stop admin mode.
Information
This article brings together information from a number of IBM technotes/blogs (IV07553, 1976001, 1473106, 1377175 , “How to turn ON and turn OFF Maximo Admin Mode”). Readers are encouraged to read and rate these technotes/articles.
The article includes additional information based on my experiences as a support lead.
What happens when admin mode is enabled?
When a JVM is put into admin mode then a number of key steps occur.
- Users are warned
- Users are logged out
- Crontasks are stopped
- Event listeners are switched off
- Maxsession’s active flag is set to 0
Notifying users that the system will be unavailable
If a system is being put into admin mode then users should be forewarned that the system will be unavailable.
A quick way to do this is to modify the welcome message used on the login screen. This is stored in the following entry with the Message Group “login” and Message Key “welcomemaximomessage”.
The message will be displayed on a web page so HTML tags like
can be used to insert line breaks.
Some admin mode related points to consider
Several of these points suggest using backend SQL statements. The points made in my previous article should be considered before executing any SQL.
Set the number of admin sessions to allow multiple administrator logins to at least 3
If the browser crashes and the limit is 1 then the system administrator has to wait for the session to timeout.
If you are in this situation then the best solution is to update the system property in the MAXPROPVALUE table where the propname = ‘mxe.adminmode.numsessions’
It has been a while since I looked at this but I don’t think this isn’t cached so it should be possible to change the value and then try again.
If it doesn’t work then you will need to shutdown the JVM , update the value and then restart the JVM.
The first time you experience this it can be disconcerting, particularly if your organisations change control process demands explanations for operations running over time.
Add a step into the release plan to switch admin mode off & get someone to login with non-admin account
If you don’t switch off admin mode then normal users won’t be able to login and scheduled crontasks won’t operate.
If you are in this situation then go to the Database Configuration application and use the select action->Manage Admin Mode option to switch off admin mode.
Stop all JVMs apart from one before initiating admin mode
Most installations will have multiple JVMs.
There have been cases where JVMs fail to enter admin mode and administrators can see the following error message:
BMXAA3994W - There is a mixture of Admin Mode settings for the servers on this cluster. Wait until all instances are in the same mode and try again. This may take up to 10 minutes.
This error can be seen even if all the JVMs have been switched off and then one JVM is restarted.
If you are in this situation then shutdown ALL the JVMs and delete the entries in the serversession table (7.6 installations) or maxsession table (7.1/7.5)
Stop/reschedule long running crontasks
If a long running crontask is running when admin mode is initiated then the admin mode can be delayed until the crontask is stopped.
Checking if admin mode is on & switching it off
I have seen situations where admin mode is on and it is necessary to manually switch off admin mode after all the configuration work has finished.
The following step should only be used if you are absolutely sure that the configuration has finished and that there will be no ill consequences. Executing this inappropriately could lead to serious problems and damage the installation.
The following query can be used to check if Maximo believes it is still configuring:
select * from maxvars where varname='CONFIGURING'
If the value is 1 then Maximo is still performing a configuration option. Technote 1437301 provides advice in this situation.
There is a tool in the build folder structure to enable/disable admin mode.
IBM\SMP\maximo\tools\maximo\internal
SetAdminMode -mOFF
Behind the scenes the script the changes the MAXVAR “ADMINRESTART” variable to OFF.
If you are executing use this SQL then it should only be executed if the CONFIGURING MAXVAR value is 0.
The SQL should only be executed in extreme circumstances.
Should I always enable admin mode if I am doing admin operations like dataloads?
Absolutely not. In some cases putting the JVM into admin mode can cause other problems.
The admin mode disables the event listeners. Maximo uses event listeners to trigger other actions.
When creating/loading PMs Maximo will needs to create PMHIERARCHY records. If the server is in admin mode then the related records will not be created.
If you need to prevent users from logging on then the best solution is to disable the web servers/load balancers feeding the traffic to the Maximo installation.
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