If one of your NAM fronted applications is having issues, configure NAM to display a "Maintenance Page" rather than displaying the default NAM error page. This looks much more professional than a 504 Gateway Timeout page.

This works for NAM 3.1 SP2.

The maintenance page that will be displayed will be a .jsp file. In this example, we'll call it offline.jsp.

The first thing you need to do is create the NAM method and class:

• Login to the NAM console

• Click on Devices --> Identity Servers --> YOUR CLUSTER

• Click on the Local --> Methods

• Click New

• Enter "Maint" for Display Name

• Select "Secure Name/Password - Form" for Class

• No user store needs to be selected

• In the Properties section, click New

• Type "MainJSP" for the Property Name

• Type "true" for the Property Value

• Click OK

• Click New again

• Type "JSP" for the Property Name

• Type "offline" for the Property Value
  NOTE: The name of this property value has to correspond to the filename of the .jsp file.
  
• Click OK twice

• Click on Contracts

• Click New

• Enter "Maint" for Display Name

• Enter "novell/maint" for URI

• Assign the "Maint" method using the arrows

• Leave everything else as is

• Click OK twice and Apply your updates

The next thing you need to do is actually create the offline.jsp file on the IDP server(s).

-Create the offline.jsp file on all IDP servers in the /var/opt/novell/tomcat5/webapps/nidp/jsp/ directory. It can be as simple as a plain one line text file containing only "Down for Maintenance" or you can customize it if you are familiar with JSP's. Attached is a messy but working template you can use that allows you to at least have a custom header image.

Using the example above, the image.jpg file needs to be located in the /var/opt/novell/tomcat5/webapps/nidp/images/ directory on all IDP servers.

Note: If you make modifications to the offline.jsp file and you don't see the changes taking affect, delete offline_jsp.class and online_jsp.java files from the /var/opt/novell/tomcat5/work/Catalina/localhost/nidp/org/apache/jsp/jsp/ directory and try again.

Finally, you need to apply the "Maint Page" when needed:

• Login to the NAM Console

• Go to Devices --> Access Gateways

• Click on Edit

• Click on the Proxy that is having issues

• Click on the Proxy Service

• Click on the Protected Resources tab

• Click on the Authentication Procedure and change it to Maint

• Click OK and go to Devices --> Access Gateways

• Click Update