How do I disable maintenance mode in Magento?

Question

My Magento website displays an error saying maintenance mode is enabled. How do I disable maintenance mode?

Answer

If the file.maintenance.flag exists in the var folder of the Magento installation maintenance mode is enabled.

To disable maintenance mode, you can move the file aside to disable maintenance mode, the next command assumes you are in the document root of the Magento installation:

mv var/.maintenance.flag var/.maintenance.flag.backup

After you confirm that this resolves the issue you can remove the var/.maintenance.flag.backup file.