WebSphere Installation - Port 80 is Not Available

WebSphere Installation - Port 80 is Not Available

while installing Maximo/WebSphere, you may encounter an issue with Availability of Port (mostly Port 80).

Resolution:

Generic about checking Port Availability:

To check which all ports are being used, run this on command prompt (in windows):
         netstat -an
Output of above command will show all the ports which are in use.

To check a specific port (e.g. Port 80), run the following command (in windows):
         netstat -an | find "port_number"
         netstat -an | find "80"
If above command returns any output, that means port is in us.
If above command doesn't return any output, Port is Free, and can be used.

Work Around for WebSphere Port 80 Issue:

Go to Administrative Tools in Windows
Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
Expand Server Node (Host Name) on the left panel
Expand Sites
Click on Default Web Site
On right panel, click on Bindings
New window will open with List of Bindings, select http, click on Edit button
Change Port from 80 to 8080, click Ok, click Close
Select Server Node (Host Name) on the left panel again and click on Restart Server from the right panel to restart IIS Server,
No reboot is required.

Now you can proceed with the Installation, error should be resolved.

Reference: http://knowmaximo.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/websphere-installation-port-80-is-not.html

Maximo outbound files with Chinese text displays as ??

Issue: Maximo is enabled with 'Chinese' language and majority of the data is entered in Chinese. Maximo is customized to generate outbound text (.txt) files into a folder. Noticed that the Chinese characters are displayed as ?? in the .txt files.

Environment: Maximo 7.5, SQL Server 2008, Windows 2008


Solution: To resolve this issue, the below are configured in the windows environment:
1. Install Chinese fonts ;
2. Uncheck " Hide Fonts" in Font settings. 

VMWARE Doesn't Shut Down

Nowadays, for many reasons we use VMware and in my case I love using vmware for development ! If my environment corrupt, I just delete the image and use the backup image (off course my development environment). But recently few images doesn't shutdown - shows BLACK screen - even after many hours; I need to force shutdown my computer, but this sometimes corrupt my image.

After spending some time on the internet, the best solution I found is to edit the .vmx file with the below properties: 

1. Shut down the VM before you do anything; if something like a Production server,
you should either backup the entire directory that holds the VM files or take a
snapshot (depends on your product).
2. In the VM's folder, locate the .VMX file
3. Make a copy (backup) of the file (this is important!)
4. Edit the file using notepad (don't use anything like Word) - locate the following
entries in file - if you DO NOT find them, add them to the bottom of the file:

prefvmx.minVmMemPct = "100"

mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"

mainMem.partialLazySave = "FALSE"

mainMem.partialLazyRestore = "FALSE"

5. Save the file and exit notepad
6. Start the VM - let it completely start, log in, then choose normal shutdown - should
now shutdown in a matter of seconds.


I've had no adverse effects with these settings but use at your own risk. 

Unable to login into Maximo

Issue: This morning after I came back from my long weekend, I tried to login into one of  our customers development environment using Maxadmin. Surprisingly, I get a message "Cannot Login into Maximo at this time. Please contact System Administrator". We have no password expiry set up nor reset the maxadmin password.

I checked Maxadmin password from database and don't notice any change in password. I also noticed that when I remote login into development environment or access SQL developer, system was too slow.

First thing, I thought the slowness might be due to insufficient space and my assumption was right, 0 GB available. I started deleting all unwanted files including old log files. Then, I shrink the SQL Server database log files to free more space.

Now, again I tried to login into Maximo.

 Hurray, I was able to login into Maximo !!!

Solution: Free up the disk space.