Creating a Maintenance Page
Sometimes there is a need to be able to completely disable access to content on your repository, but you want users to be aware that the repository is just unavailable temporarily for scheduled maintenance, which turning off your web server would not be possible. A common situation where you may want to do this is when you need to make alterations to the database and you want to ensure this does not otherwise change whilst you are making these alterations. The best way of doing this is to create a maintenance page, for which requests to your repository will be redirected.
The following guide provides instructions on how to produce a fully branded maintenance page. It is based on an approach originally developed for the CentOS 7 Linux but should work more generally, however, file paths are liable to be different. Similarly, if you are running Apache 2.2, then the Require all granted line will be different (see Apache's Upgrade Note).
- Create a directory to host your maintenance page and move to this directory:
mkdir /var/www/maintenance cd /var/www/maintenance/
- On the repository's server, as root symlink the images, javascript and style directories from your archives HTML cache directory E.g.
ln -s /opt/eprints3/archives/example/html/en/images ln -s /opt/eprints3/archives/example/html/en/javascript ln -s /opt/eprints3/archives/example/html/en/style
- Move to the /var/www/maintenance/ directory and download the homepage of your repository. E.g.
wget -O index.html http://eprints.example.org/
- Edit /var/www/maintenance/index.html and update the auto-X.Y.Z.css and auto-X.Y.Z.js with auth.css and auto.js. Then insert the following HTML markup, adjusting the dates DD/MM/YYYY, time HH:MM and REPOSITORY_NAME as appropriate. Where to put this will vary between repository; it is usually best placed after the title in the main content part of your page. (It may also be worth removing various parts of this page, such as the Latest Additions, as visitors will not be able to access them):
<div class="ep_msg_warning">
<div class="ep_msg_warning_content">
<table style="padding:5px">
<tr>
<td style="padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; vertical-align: top;">
<img alt="Warning" src="/style/images/warning.png" />
</td>
<td>
<h3 style="padding: 10px 0 5px; 0; margin: 0;">Notice of Scheduled Maintenance</h3>
<p>Please note that REPOSITORY_NAME will be unavailable from HH:MM on DD/MM/YYYY until
HH:MM on DD/MM/YYYY due to scheduled maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</div>
- Create /root/eprints-maintenance.conf containing the following lines, while updating ServerName and ServerAdmin as appropriate:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName eprints.example.org
ServerAdmin eprints@example.org
DocumentRoot /var/www/maintenance
<Directory /var/www/maintenance/>
Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
Require all granted
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index|style|javascript|images)
RewriteRule ^ /index.html [R=503]
</Directory>
ErrorLog logs/error_log
TransferLog logs/access_log
LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>
- If your repository uses HTTPS you will also need to create a file called /root/eprints-maintenance-ssl.conf with the following contents. Update ServerName, ServerAdmin, SSLCertificateFile, SSLCertificateKeyFile and SSLCertificateChainFile as appropriate:
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName eprints.example.org
ServerAdmin eprints@example.org
SSLEngine on
SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1
SSLHonorCipherOrder on
SSLCompression off
SSLSessionTickets off
SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA2
SSLCertificateFile /opt/eprints3/archives/example/ssl/eprints.example.org.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /opt/eprints3/archives/example/ssl/eprints.example.org.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /opt/eprints3/archives/example/ssl/eprints.example.org.ca-bundle
DocumentRoot /var/www/maintenance
<Directory /var/www/maintenance/>
Options +Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
Require all granted
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(index|style|javascript|images)
RewriteRule ^ /index.html [R=503]
</Directory>
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
CustomLog logs/ssl_request_log \
"%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"
ErrorLog logs/ssl_error_log
TransferLog logs/ssl_access_log
LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>
- Next you will need to find the following line line in /etc/httpd/ (On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora) or /etc/apache2/ (on Ubuntu/Debian) and comment it out:
Include /opt/eprints3/cfg/apache.conf
- Then add the following line to this file:
Include /root/eprints-maintenance.conf
- Again if you are running HTTPS on your repository you will need to find the following or similar line in /etc/httpd/ or /etc/apache2/ and comment it out:
Include /opt/eprints3/archives/*/ssl/securevhost.conf
- Then add the following line to this file:
Include /root/eprints-maintenance-ssl.conf
- Finally, you will need to restart the web server:
apachectl graceful
You should now see that any request to your repository is redirected to /index.html (e.g. http://eprints.example.org/index.html), which displays your maintenance page.
Once maintenance is completed all you need to do is uncomment the line(s) commented out in step 6 (and step 7) where appropriate and to save time for future scheduled maintenance, comment out the new lines you added. Then just restart the web server like in step 8.
If you have planned maintenance again, assuming your branding does not change in the meantime, all you need to do is update the times in /var/www/maintenance/index.html uncomment and comment out the lines in steps 6 and 7 as appropriate and restart the web server and your maintenance page is back in place.
