We have a very strange issue. We have a large CF application that was originally written in CF9, upgraded to CF2016, then onto CF2021. There is a invoicing job that runs as a scheduled task everyday. This invoicing job does many steps (creates, checks, and pays) invoices. There are many components (functions) that are used during this process. We went live with this new server in late November of 2021 and since we have done that, the invoicing job has had issues about 4 or 5 times so far.
The errors I am seeing are usually something like:
Could not find the ColdFusion component or interface components/distributor.distribcontroller.
I say usually, because even the "missing" component changes and they are different each time.
I have checked every component for errors, so that should not be it and most days this invoice job runs fine.
CF2021 is running on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, 4 CPU.4GB ram. other than this invoice job, application is fine (users never experience missing components)
I also do not use mappings, I have a custom mechanism where I set the compent path in a cfm file and use the "request" structure like: <cfset request.components.distributor = 'components/distributor'> in a file that gets included in the Application.cfc - its may not be ideal, but it is just the was it was build years ago and too much work to change it. (i think).
Any ideas? Any help would be appreciated.
I have a custom mechanism
Feels like a red flag. Especially since it uses the request structure.
How many CFCs are you dealing with? Would it be worth looking at WireBox to handle CFC configuration and creation? Might be overkill for the current issue, but worth looking into.
https://wirebox.ortusbooks.com/
Are you caching component paths? It may be that unchecking the component cache could address this issue.
You might post this issue over on the CFML Slack workspace. Some of the Adobe CF Engineers hang out there.
https://cfml.slack.com/
Signup: https://cfml-slack.herokuapp.com/
Related
I am trying to install ColdFusion 5 but it looks like data2.cab file is missing from my copy. I understand on Adam Cameron's Dev Blog he had a copy of Coldfusion 5 from the document he wrote about installing it on Windows 7 64bit. Does anyone have a copy of the software please?
You can find installers for older versions of ColdFusion on a community maintained site: http://www.cfmlrepo.com/
I doubt you'll be able to get it up and running reliably as it's a 32-bit installer and won't run on modern Windows. It's pre-Java, so you'll also have issues with C compatibility for things like custom CFX tags. If you've got an old OS on a server somewhere, maybe you can do something with it.
What problem are you trying to address? Working on a legacy application? CF 5 should no longer be running any kind of production sites as there are a world of security issues given the modern Internet.
If possible, I'd suggest trying to run the code on the open source Lucee CFML engine https://www.lucee.org/. Depending on the complexity of your application, it won't just be a matter of setting up data sources and running the code. But in the long run, if this app needs to exist for a while more, it'll be a safer and less expensive solution.
If you have more questions about CF 5, you'll probably find more help on the CFML Slack channel. You can get an invite here: https://cfml-slack.herokuapp.com/
I am required to continue to support an Adobe ColdFusion 8.01 server for several more months, or more. I've come across a bug with the CFImage tag, Missing Huffman code table which causes certain JPG images to fail. This is reported as being fixed in hot fix 4 however Adobe in the failed wisdom chose to take all CF8 hotfixes offline. Guess where I won't be spending anymore of my money.
I've tried desperately to find a support site or even offline archive that has the chf8000004.zip file I need. Anyone happen to have a copy?
I am not sure if Stack Overflow is the correct venue for this question. You might get better responses on Server Exchange. However since we are here I was in a very similar situation and found this site very useful. I know they have a large folder of CF8 hotfixes
http://www.cfmlrepo.com
Edit: I believe this link will bring you right to the CH4 for 8.0.1
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/QBUXJCtMDDIKRZEDO4UAPFjOatzj3ajH1bHbopRJTWy/folder/NfK85LpTQu2hCpH2VqShPQ
What I am looking for is a tool that easily or automatically sends coldfusion error messages to their system.
Then I can use the web-based interface, to manage priorities, track who fixed what and so forth.
But I want to use this to help us deal with errors better, but also to show the importance of a bug tracking system to my fellow works.
System Requirements: Apache, Windows, Coldfusion 8 Standard, Sql Server 2005.
Financial Requirements: Free or Open Source
Goal Or Purpose: To encourage my fellow workers to want and use a bug tracking system.
Does this re-write make more sense?
Thanks
Craig
Wiki has a list of issue tracking software, maybe this list could help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue_tracking_systems
You may be able to find a hosted service and use either email or web services to create the ticket using onError. With that said, a simple issue tracking app could be created for your site using the same DB used to drive the content. 2 or 3 tables would take care of the data storage and you're already using CF so the application layer is already there.
HTH.
I have been heavily using this type of a setup for several years by email only, and the last 3 years with a Bug Tracking Software.
I must say, the bug tracking software has made my life so much more peaceful. Nothing is left, forgotten, or slips through the cracks. It's easy to find trends in errors, and remember "all the times" it happened.
Our setup is like this:
1) Coldfusion + Appropriate framework with error reporting - It doesn't matter what you use. I have used Fusebox extensively and am making the transition to ColdBox. Both are very capable, in addition to Mach-II, FW/1, Model-Glue, etc. The key part you have to find in them is their ability to catch "onError", usualy in the application CFC.
2) Custom OnError Script - Wherever an error occurs, you want to capture the maximum amount of information about that error and email it in. What we do is, when an error occurs, we log the user out with a message of "oops, log in again". Before logging them out, the application captures the error and emails it to Fogbugz. Along with it, at the top we include the CGI variables for the IP address, browser being used, etc. Over time you will find the things you need to add.
3) Routing in Fogbugz. A 2 user version of Fogbugz is free, and hosted online. There are two main ways to submit bugs. One is to email one in at a time. So if an error happens 2000 times, you get 2000 emails, and 2000 cases. Not always the best to link them together, etc. They have a feature called BugzScout, which is essentially an HTTP address that you do a form post to with cfform with all of the same information you would have put into the email. There's plenty of documentation on this and something I've always wanted to get around to. I had a scenario of 2000 emails for the first time happen a few weeks ago so I'll be switching over to this.
Hope that helps. Share what you ended up doing and why so we all can learn too!
I'm surprised no one mentioned LighthousePro (http://lighthousepro.riaforge.org). Open source - 100% free - and ColdFusion. As the author I'm a bit biased though. :)
Hard question to answer not knowing what kind of restrictions are there? Do you have any permissions to install anything? Also most bug-tracking systems require some kind of database support.
I have a suggestion. You can put in place a basic bug-tracking system, that just allows people to create tickets, and allows you/someone else to close it.
More Windows based tools are mentioned here
Good open-source bug tracking / issue tracking sofware for Windows
Any reason why coldfusion specifically?
I really like Fogbugz from the makers of Stack Overflow. For one user it's quite reasonably priced. I enter some bugs manually and have others emailed in.
A lot of bug tracking software will expose SOAP methods for entering data into them.
For example, we used Axosoft's OnTime and that exposed some WSDL pages that I consumed in my application. I was told that Jira did as well.
There are few in CF411 list: Bug Tracking/Defect Tracking/Trouble Ticket/Help Desk Tools Written in CFML
We use HopToad. There is another bug-tracking app called LightHouse that integrates with HopToad so you can easily create a [bug] ticket from an incoming exception. HopToad has an API of which there are many clients, you want the CF based one:
http://github.com/timblair/coldfusion-hoptoad-notifier
Even if you dont use HopToad and you end up using a different service or roll your own, if you needed to write your own API client you could leverage the code or pattern(s) of the above HopToad client.
A lot of good information from everyone, and I really do appreciate the efforts given. But not the answer i was looking for. Which maybe means, that what i want does not exist, yet.
So i may have to roll my own solution...Or maybe integrate with another existing app...
Thank You all.
Let me first say I am aware of this faq for Mach-II, which discusses using application specific mappings as a third option when:
locating the framework in the server root is not possible and
creating a server wide mapping to the Mach-II framework directory is impossible
Using application specific mappings would also work for other ColdFusion frameworks with similar requirements (ColdSpring). Here is my issue however: my (I should say "their") production servers are all running ColdFusion MX7, and application specific mappings were introduced in ColdFusion 8. I most likely will be unable to do option 1 or 2 because they involve creating server wide changes that could conflict with other applications (I don't have a final word on this but I am preparing for that to be the case).
That said, is there anybody out there who was in similar bind and has done an option 4, in any ColdFusion version, or with any similar framework? The only option 4 I can think of is modifying the entire framework to change this hardcoded path, and even if that worked it would be time consuming and risky. I'm fairly sure that if there was a simple modification or other simple solution it would already be included in the framework (maybe it's included in version 1.8 of Mach-II and I don't know about it yet).
Any thoughts on solving this problem or even unorthodox setups with libraries that have specific path requirements would be appreciated. Any thoughts from Team Mach-II would especially appreciated...we're on the same team here Matt! ;-)
EDIT
Apparently, the ColdBox framework includes a refactor.xml ANT task which includes a target that refactors the ColdBox code to use a different absolute path as a base along with several other useful refactoring targets. So problem solved for ColdBox users.
Looking at the build.xml for Mach-II (1.6 and 1.8) I don't see any target in there that would allow me to refactor the code. I thought about creating a feature request ticket for such a task for Mach-II but frankly I don't think creating such an ANT task is a big priority for the MachII team since the need really only relates to either
a) users of ColdFusion versions below 8
b) someone who wants to use multiple Mach-II versions in the same application, a use I doubt they want to support
The ColdSpring code I have doesn't come with any ANT tasks at all, although I do have unit tests, and I bet if I poked around the SVN I'd find a few build scripts.
Using Ant tasks to refactor and retest the code, or the simpler (and sort of cop out) solution of creating a separate ColdFusion instance for the application are the best answers I've been able to come up with. I don't need this application to exist in the shared scope of other applications, so my first solution is going to be to try and get a dedicated CF instance for this application.
I'm also going to look at the ColdBox refactor.xml ANT task however and see if I can modify it to work generically to recognize and refactor CFC references with modified absolute paths. If I complete this task I'll be sure to post the code somewhere and edit create an answer to link to it. If anybody else wants to take a crack at that or help me out with it feel free.
Until then I'll leave this question open and see if someone comes up with a better solution.
Fusebox is not so strict, I think.
In XML mode (maybe I call this not 100% correcly, just mean using the Application.cfm) it's just proper include in index.cfm, something like:
<cfinclude template="fusebox5/fusebox5.cfm" />
In non-XML mode it will need proper extending in the root Application.cfc:
<cfcomponent extends="path.to.fusebox5.Application" output="false">
All you need is to know the path.
Perhaps you could create a symbolic link and let the operating system resolve the issue for you?
I've been playing with FW/1 lately, and while it may look like you need to add a mapping and extend org.corfield.framework, you can actually move the framework.cfc file into your web root and just extend="framework". It's dead simple, and gets you straight into a great framework with no mess and very little overhead.
It should be as simple as dropping the 'MachII' folder at the root of your domain (i.e. example.com/MachII). No mappings are required to use Mach-II if you just deploy at the root of the domain of your website.
Also:
Please file a ticket for the ANT task you mentioned in your question. Team Mach-II would love to have this issue logged:
Enter a new ticket on the Mach-II Trac
If you want to tackle an ANT task for us, we can get stuff like this incorporated into the builds faster than waiting to for a Team member to work on the ticket. Code submissions from the community are welcome and appreciated.
We don't keep an eye on Stack Overflow very often so we invite you to join our official community group at called "Mach-II for ColdFusion" at Google Groups. The Google Group is the best place to ask questions or comments like this if you want feedback from the Team.
Google does not really deliver much content (or my query sucks). Has anyone made the switch and can share the experience?
We found that when we upgraded to CF 8:
Carraige returns are stripped in plain text emails. We found we had to be explicit about line feed characters by creating a var like so <cfset CRLF = "#Chr(13)##Chr(10)#"> and inserting it in the plain text email where we needed the line feed. We eventually went to HTML emails.
Third party jar files caused problems due to the order in which jar files are loaded. Certain jar files must appear first in the java classpath as defined in cfroot/runtime/bin/jvm.config. This was a messy workaround and we have discontinued using that jar.
Also make sure to patch immediately to 8.0.1. We had a performance nightmare becuase of this issue.
Best of luck!
I haven't had any CFMX 6.1 apps to switch across, but Railo is definitely my CFML engine of choice.
Compatibility-wise, there is very unlikely to be any significant issues migrating from CFMX 6.1, and you can easily test this with the Express version - no installation required!
Railo can be stricter about certain aspects of CFML, so you might get a few errors if you exploit bugs/weaknesses with CF, but nothing really to worry about.
And, if you do get stuck on anything, the Railo mailing list is active with plenty of friendly helpful people who can help to get you going again.
We made the switch about a year ago and if you are talking about only on the code side, then the change from cf6 to cf8 shouldn't require any changes as long as your setup remains the same. One change is the way that CF handles verity collections, so if you make use of cfsearch then it might be something you look into. There are a number of improvements from cf6 that you should look to implement. The few that we have found especially helpful are cfdocument, cfimage, cfpdf, and cffeed. Here is a good link with other key points... http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/upgrade/
If you are upgrading from CFMX 6.1 to Railo 3.1 almost no problems should occur. There are some things that we do not support (like CFREPORT or C++ CFX tags). Besides that it should be very easy to migrate existing CFMX 6.1 code over to Railo. By default Railo is configured to be as compatible as possible with CFMX.
There are some other things you might watch out for:
If you create a struct like this in CF: <cfset a["image.x"]> you will be able to call that variable by using the "." notation, although it's misleading. So in CF you could do <cfoutput>#a.image.x#</cfoutput> whereas in Railo you would have to write: <cfoutput>#a["image.x"]#</cfoutput>
Inside functions creating variables in the local scope that are named like scopes will work in CFMX but not in Railo. So this: <cfset var url = "whatever"> will work in CF but not in Railo.
In Railo you cannot use the application scope or the session scope before it was initialized with cfapplication. Well in CF you couldn't either but there CF will create a local variable in the variables scope called "application" or "session". This sometimes leads to confusion.
Besides these things, it should go flawlessly. If you have of course any problems, just contact our Railo Google group or us directly at www.getrailo.com
Gert Franz
Railo Professional Open Source
I'm not aware of any depreciated tags or functions from CF6.1 to CF8. CF8 has been optimized for performance so you will most likely see an improvement in your application depending on what was used.
I successfully upgraded a large application from CF4.5 to CF8 with no problems. If the application consists of pretty straight forward use of ColdFusion tags and functions, you shouldn't have much problem.
However, since the developer version is free to use, you should really setup a test environment and determine the answer to this question yourself by testing your application. All datasources, custom tags, etc will have to be migrated and tested. If any CF6.1 applications used any of the lower level java api available in some things, you may need to test that thoroughly to make sure the underlying implementation of the coldfusion hasn't changed and fix what's necessary.
As for Railo3.1, there may be some tags or functions not implemented yet. You will again need to setup a test environment and determine this yourself. Somewhere on the Railo site there should be a list of compatibilities between the difference versions of CF and Railo.