What can cause PAM API call error CA PAM server is starting up. Please try again later?

Products

• CA Privileged Access Manager (PAM)

Issue/Introduction

We are developing a python script using the PAM Rest API to provision devices, target applications and target accounts in PAM. The device and target application are created successfully, but the call to create a target application fails. The returned error is "?logout_msg=CA PAM server is starting up. Please try again later.". The PAM server is running, not starting up. Users can logon and work and other API calls complete successfully. When we use the same data structure in the PAM User Interface, Api Docs, it works.

What can cause PAM to return a "CA PAM server is starting up" error in response to an API call?

Environment

PAM 3.x

Resolution

This error can be returned when an attempt is made to access a resource that doesn't exist. In this case connection to the PAM web service is successful and authentication completes, but the call into the Rest API fails. A correct call would fail in this manner while PAM is starting up.
The problem was observed in one case due to a type error in the python script, which called

/api/php/v1/devices.json/'+device_id+'/targetApplications/'+application_id+'/targetAccounts

Note the beginning /api/php substring. The correct path is /api.php/... Once this type error was fixed, the error disappeared and the target account was created successfully.