‘Service unavailable’ on ColdFusion 8 application service - coldfusion

I have often faced the issue ‘Service unavailable’ in ColdFusion website and need to restart the service manually. Sometimes, also need to restart the host computer.
I checked Event Viewer but I do not find any error related ColdFusion.
I am not familiar with ColdFusion.
Kindly help me. I would like to check why it happens and to solve this issue.
ColdFusion Version 8
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard - Windows 7, 64bit
IIS Version 7.5
Thank you.

To find out what is actually crashing your CF server you may find information in the "out" log. Look in the /runtime/logs directory for a file called "coldfusion-out.log" or something similar. This is where standard out goes in a running CF application. There is also a /logs directory in your application that may give additional information.
Finally, you may have a hotspot error - an abend. Look in the /runtime/bin directory for a file similar to hs_err_pidXXX.log" (where XXX is some number). If you do have such an error take a quick look to see if it is an "out of memory" error. That's the most common.
I have a post on where all those log files are located. It is from the CF8/CF9 days so it may be useful to you. Of course everyone will tell you to upgrade as well. :) Good luck!

There are two places to look with problem like this: the application server behind CF (JRun for CF8) is the connector between CF and IIS. Adobe CF uses old (IIS6?) style ISAPI connectors that may need to be rebuilt - later versions of CF have a 'rebuild connectors' batch file in cfusion\bin\connectors (something like IIS_connector.bat) but it has been a while since I've had CF8 to look at. At the very least, be certain that you have the last CF8 update from Adobe as they sometimes want you to rebuild connectors after installing them.
A better solution for newer versions of CF (10+) is to use Bilal's Boncode AJP connector - I don't think it supports CF8 but haven't tried it.
CF 8's End-Of-Life was over four years ago and later versions stopped using JRun in favor of Tomcat, which is a bit easier to troubelshoot. If you have a development environment available, you might try running your codebase on CF10 or CF11; if you have to support this application for the foreseeable future, better to do it on something resembling a current version of CF. You could also have a look at Lucee 4.5 for an OSS alternative.

Related

Migrating From ColdFusion 7 to ColdFusion 11

I'm planning a migration on a server from ColdFusion MX7 (Server 2003) to ColdFusion 11(Server 2012). There is a Other Server Where I need to migrate from ColdFusion 8 (Server 2008) to ColdFusion 11. Does my System effect in any way when upgrading like tags, or compatibility issues. Does anyone know which steps I should without effecting. I know about the code analyzer that we had in Cf administrator. I want to know if there is anything effected seriously when migrating.
Thanks in Advance
Kiran Kumar
The Code Analyzer helps in migrating your applications to ColdFusion 11 from earlier versions of ColdFusion. However, it checks the same for only two versions back. The Code Analyzer reviews the CFML pages that you specify and informs you of any potential compatibility issues. It detects unsupported and deprecated CFML features, and outlines the required implementation changes that ensure a smooth migration.
As far as the code compatibility is concerned, everything "should" work. However, it is recommended to check the code compatibility and deprecated tags (if any). You can refer to https://wikidocs.adobe.com/wiki/display/coldfusionen/Deprecated+Features & https://wikidocs.adobe.com/wiki/display/coldfusionen/Deprecated+tags,+attributes,+and+values.
I have briefly covered the entire Migration process here. So, will not iterate the same. Also, you can have a look at another helpful article for Migration Tweaks.
Having said that all, it's strongly recommended to test your website on the Testing/Development environment, before moving it on Production.
Hope this gives a better picture of the migration process.
I did the migration in the past, did not face important issue, as everyone have a different system the best solution would
- Backup
- Test the upgrade and see
if it's a production machine, you can copy your machine to a vm and test the upgrade there. it's may be a lot of work, but you can not know if you don't test
I am currently moving a ColdFusion 9 site to Coldfusion 11 and the way I tested it was to create a separate set of folders on the ms2013 server. I ran them side by side with a duplicate database with a different name for the test site.
I have moved sites up from 5 to 9 with few issues and the only one that really got me in ColdFusion 11 is dbtype in database functions. It has not only been depreciated but will always throw an error if found.
It also depends on how Coldfusion 11 will react to cfcs and other special tags if you use them. I don't so it was a snap.
Examples:
mydatabase
mydatabase1
mypagesfolder
mypagesfolder1
index.cfm
index1.cfm
Going live was a snap. I just renamed the folders, links*, dsn and renamed index1.cfm to index.cfm.
*Links only need to be changed if posting outside of folder and if so just the path.

How to use Java Mission Control (or other solutions) with ColdFusion (tomcat)

The ColdFusion monitor is great for details about the server itself but it is pretty limited when it comes to the JVM.
How can one implement Java Mission Control or similar JVM monitoring solution to monitor the JVM running ColdFusion while you are developing and testing performance / memory footprint of applications and features?
Note that I am asking this question for "community knowledge" and already know the answer, but feel free to contribute any tidbits about other monitoring solutions.
Mission control used to be bundled as as it's own utility application in the JRockit JDK. Hotspot and JRockit were two entirely different JVMs with their own JDK/JREs. By default, ColdFusion uses the HotSpot JVM. JRockit is basically defunct from new development with some of its features being merged into HotSpot.
Java Mission Control is free for development purposes.
Get started, download the the latest 1.8 JDK. My preference is to uninstall all other 64-bit JDKs and JREs installed at this time.
This step might not be needed. Change your environment variable to update your JAVA home.
a. Right click "My Computer" -> "Properties" -> "Advanced" -> "Environment Variables"
b. Change JAVA_HOME and any other JAVA vars to your new path
Adjust your jvm.config
a. Make a .bak copy of C:\ColdFusion1x\cfusion\bin\jvm.config
b. Add the following lines to the jvm.config
-XX:+UnlockCommercialFeatures
-XX:+FlightRecorder
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.autodiscovery=true
-Dcom.sun.management.jdp.name=ColdFusion10
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=7091
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
Open C:\program files\java\jdk1.8_**\lib\missioncontrol\configuration\org.eclipse.equinox.simpleconfigurator\bundles.info file with administrator privileges and remove the four lines that start with the following text:
org.eclipse.equinox.log.nl_ja
org.eclipse.equinox.log.nl_zh
org.eclipse.equinox.supplement.nl_ja
org.eclipse.equinox.supplement.nl_zh
Edit the C:\program files\java\jdk1.8_xx\lib\missioncontrol\configuration\config.ini, and add the following line: eclipse.home.location=$osgi.install.area$
Start up : C:\program files\java\jdk_1.8.0_**\bin\jmc
Note that JMC is launching from 1.8 while your ColdFusion instance is running with whatever the latest Hotspot version you have installed with your ColdFusion updater.
You can install plugins from the help -> install new software. The plugins site should already be there. This will give you full on memory analysis of a heap dump. It's not nearly as good as the JRockit memory analyzer, but it's better than nothing.
If you are running ColdFusion as a Windows service, you will need to open services.msc and shutdown your ColdFusion Application Server. Then open C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\bin\cfstart.bat to fire up Tomcat and ColdFusion as a foreground application. The jOverflow plugin will not work when running as a windows service.
You will see your JVM appear in Java Mission Control, mine is call -Xdebug since I guess it has no name and starts with the first option.
Right click on your ColdFusion JVM and select "Start JMX console". You will see something that looks like this show up on the right:
There is a whole lot to explore, including a lot of junk when it comes to examining memory due to having to sift through the ColdFusion Framework itself, but there are a ton of tutorials for deciphering what it means.
This video is your primary introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMEpRUgp9Y4
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMEpRUgp9Y4
http://www.ghidinelli.com/2009/07/16/finding-memory-leaks-coldfusion-jvm
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/jmc53-release-notes-2157171.html (see "known issues" section)

Installing Railo on Media Temple

I have a reseller account with Media temple. It doesn't support Railo ( http://www.getrailo.com/ ) out of the box but I really do want to use their service, but with some sites using Railo of course.
First port of call was Media temple to assist me...but they don't offer support with resellers on the DV with regards to installing software.
I also Googled and the only thing I can find is this (which looked perfect):
http://jakemauer.com/weblog/railo-on-mediatemple-dv-server/
However, it's out-dated somewhat and I simply do not posses enough technical skill to achieve it (I'm mainly a designer / front-end dev, offering reseller to my clients). One of the first things that guide requires is to get YUM going, but even that I was stuck on. The terminal threw up errors about other files it needed as 'dependencies' and I have no idea how to get that going. I found the process quite complicated. I'm not a server admin :(
I'd be happy to pay someone to do this, but would rather figure it out myself as I'm eager to learn too.
If anyone has experience doing this and can offer insight I'd appreciate it so much.
Thanks,
Michael.
The Railo installer should work just fine on a Media Temple VPS. Documentation on how to launch the Railo installer on a linux machine can be found here:
http://wiki.getrailo.com/wiki/Installation:InstallerDocumentation:LinLaunching
If you don't have a GUI on your server, don't worry, just SSH to your server and run the commands that are posted in the "Command-Line Install" sections.
If you have any problems with any aspect of the install process as outlined in the documentation, I'd recommend the Railo mailing list. The community there (like this one) is quite friendly and can walk you through almost any problems you encounter.

How do I deploy a web service to a virtual server from the host?

all. First of all I am sorry if this question is better for SuperUser, I couldn't tell. If it is it would be great if someone could migrate it.
So anyway, I'm building this service for SharePoint in Visual Studio 2008 with C#. Of course I need to be able to debug it to build it fast. Unfortunately my OS is XP Pro which can't run SharePoint because it is not a server OS. Instead of reinstalling my OS (which would create other problems) I got Server 2003 + SharePoint Server 2007 up and running inside a virtual machine with Virtual PC. Is there some sort of pipe I can create from Visual Studio that will let me test my service from within the virtual machine?
Thank you!
I guess I should add, these are the tools I have been given. At this time, reinstalling or getting new equipment/software is not an option.
This is definitely stackoverflow worthy. It is a development process related question after all.
So you have two issues, deployment and debugging.
For deployment, there are really two ways to approach this. One is that you create a real .wsp package that you can deploy/install/upgrade via the SharePoint provided mechanisms. You really should have this prepared since it is the way that your final code should be deployed. The trouble is that you can only perform the deploy/install/upgrade via a machine connected to the farm. In this case it would be your VM. In cases where I have had to work this way, I have scripted the creation of the .wsp and copied it to the server. On the server is another script to do the deployment. Yes it is more steps than I would like but it does work and it is pretty mindless so it isn't too much of a hassle.
The second approach would be the quicker, less correct way. In this case if all you are doing is changing the code, then you just need to get your new DLL to replace the old one and bounce IIS. You might be able to do that all remotely via script fired from Visual Studio after build succeeds action.
As for debugging, you can certainly debug things remotely. Look into tutorials on remotely debugging processes using Visual Studio.

Upgrading the JRE used by ColdFusion

I have a ColdFusion 8.1 application. It gets heavy use and I see jrun.exe getting very high memory usage in the task manager. This is a 32-bit windows 2003 server. When Jrun gets around a gig of memory usage ColdFusion will stop responding at some point. The logs are a little vague, but I start to see garbage collection and heap errors in the ColdFusion log. I assume that the JRE is running out of memory.
I have the max JVM heap set to 1.2gig. After some experimenting, this seemed to be the biggest amount I could allocate and still have ColdFusion start ok. I realize that going to 64-bit might solve the problem, but that is not an option at this time.
I am considering upgrading the JRE (it is at v6.x dated pre-2008, though I don't know the exact version. I am using the JRE that came with ColdFusion 8.1. Has anyone gone through this? I assume it's just a matter of installing the new JRE and pointing ColdFusion to the new JRE directory in the ColdFusion server settings.
tia
don
it's EXTREMELY easy to do.
1) download the Java SE Development Kit and install it like normal.
2) open up the jmv.config for cf in a text editor, located in c:\coldfusion8\runtime\bin
3) comment out the existing java.home line with a by putting a "#" at the beginning of the line add a new java.home line below it pointing to your jvm installation.
As an example, my java.home and jvm.config look like this:
java.home=C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.6.0_11/jre
4) restart the CF services.
As a bonus, you can running JavaRa and free up some space by deleting all the old versions of the JRE.
Adobe has a Knowledge Base that covers issues like this. Check out http://www.adobe.com/go/2d547983 for instructions.
Sean Corfield has an article that provides some info on using Java 6 with ColdFusion 8 here:
http://corfield.org/blog/index.cfm/do/blog.entry/entry/Java_6_and_ColdFusion_8
As long as you install 1.6.0_10 or greater, you should be fine. You might check out ColdFusionBloggers.org from time to time in case other JVM issues come to light in the future.
You didn't specify whether or not you were using the stand-alone server instance or a multi-server configuration. If you're getting a heavy volume of traffic and have a dual core machine with a lot of physical memory, I would consider looking into the multi-server set-up for CF8 and putting together a cluster with load balancing. This will help to distribute your traffic across several instances of CF8 and, assuming you have a beefy server, make better use of the physical resources that you have available.
-Rick
Consider moving Java 7. Java 7 has the G1 Garbage collector which is better at memory deallocation.
If you are having out of memory issues it could be because
functions are not using var or local scope
<cfdump> is used in a production system
Sessions are too large or are not set to expire in a reasonable amount of time
Queries are way too large SELECT * can cause that.
Excessive number Query of Queries.
The site is connecting to a slow database. Resources are held until the DB returns data
DSN has the data buffer set to more than 64k