About Clearing WebSphere 7.0-9.0 Cache Files for Maximo Administrators

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One of Maximo Systems Support's favorite troubleshooting tips is to clear the WebSphere caches. Why do we recommend it so often? Because it often addresses problems that appear after rebuild and restoring the Maximo ear file. Uninstalling an old and installing a new Maximo application EAR should clear the cache,s because the new ear file contains updates to cached files, but not all files are cleared. Clearing the cache files takes little time, and there is no downside to it. If it does not provide a solution, we move on.

The technote we use is Clearing WebSphere temporary file caches for Maximo Asset Management, which I wrote based on older technotes. On that page I link to WebSphere's How to clear the WebSphere class caches, which covers their class caches. It is not usually a solution to Maximo redeployment problems, but it is recommended because, " it is possible that the class caches are still holding onto previous versions of classes. It is also possible that the caches became corrupted."

To dive a little deeper into WebSphere temporary, cache and log files, go to Things to know before deleting temporary, cache and log files in WebSphere Application Server. The main points he makes that are important to Maximo Administrators are:

• Before making any changes to the environment, take a backup of the profile.
• Shut down all WebSphere processes before clearing files.
• Never delete tranlog subdirectories in a production environment.

He also discusses deleting config/configuration temp files, which, from a Maximo administrator perspective, I would not recommend doing unless directed to by a WebSphere support engineer.

While Clearing WebSphere temporary file caches for Maximo Asset Management lists four directories to clear, the most important is <WebSphere home>\AppServer\profiles\<profile>\temp\<node>\<server>\*.*, which our installation tools create as C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\profiles\ctgAppSrv01\temp\ctgNode01\MXServer\*.* or /opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/ctgAppSrv01/temp/ctgNode01/MXServer/*.*