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ColdFusion Server

Beginner

Does ColdFusion Server store it's configuration settings?

ColdFusion MX stores its configuration settings in text files. In earlier versions, they were stored in the Windows registry.

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How can I disable RDS?

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How can I find out what version of ColdFusion my host has installed?

Output the server variables with this

<cfoutput>
server.ColdFusion.ProductLevel = #server.ColdFusion.ProductLevel#<bR>
server.ColdFusion.ProductName = #server.ColdFusion.ProductName#<bR>
server.ColdFusion.ProductVersion = #server.ColdFusion.ProductVersion#<bR>
server.ColdFusion.SerialNumber = #server.ColdFusion.SerialNumber#<bR>
server.ColdFusion.SupportedLocales = #server.ColdFusion.SupportedLocales#<bR>
server.OS.AdditionalInformation = #server.OS.AdditionalInformation#<bR>
server.OS.BuildNumber = #server.OS.BuildNumber#<bR>
server.OS.Name = #server.OS.Name#<bR>
server.OS.Version = #server.OS.Version#
</cfoutput>

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How can I get my copy of ColdFusion Server Single license version to accept requests from a computer with a different IP address?

The single-user version will accept a connection from any IP address, but once it's accepted that connection, it won't accept connections from other IP addresses. So, just stop and restart your server, then connect from the desired IP address. In Windows 95/98/ME, right-click on the ColdFusion Icon in the System Tray, select Shutdown and then restart ColdFusion Server using Start | Programs | ColdFusion Server | ColdFusion Server

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How can I install Apache and ColdFusion?

http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/apache.cfm

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How can I view my development web site from a different IP address?

Just restart the ColdFusion Application Server Service.

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I found this error in my log files "Windows NT error number 109 occurred". What does that mean?

NT Error 109 is "The pipe has been ended." This just means that the browser stopped waiting. The user clicked on the Stop button before the page had loaded or entered another URL.

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Is it possible for ColdFusion Server to talk to an AS/400 machine?

Yes you use client access's built in odbc connection. Very easy, kind of slow but I haven't really had too much problems with it. Getting AS/400 SQL should speed up everything though, with stored procedures and all.

1. Make sure you are running DB2 Connect Version 5 Fixpak 6 on your Solaris Server.
2. From DB2 Connect create a catalog for your database
3. At the command prompt type the following
4. catalog tcpip node "as400 or any name" remote "as400" hostname or ip address" server "port number"
5. catalog database "dbname" as "dbalias" at node "same as previous line" authentication dcs
6. catalog dcs database "dbname" as "dbalias"
7. connect to the database using an assigned username and password to check if cataloging was successful

Then once the connection is confirmed go into your CF Administrator and setup your connection with a username a password, then test. The connection should be successful.

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What are smservaz.exe and smservauth.exe for?

They're the two services used by Advanced Security - the authentication and authorization servers.

In Windows, you can often find out what a program does by right-clicking it in Windows Explorer, selecting "Properties", then selecting the "Version" tab. In the case of SmServAuth.exe, that would give you "SiteMinder (TM) Authentication Server".

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What are the ColdFusion Application Server, Executive and RDS services for under the NT Services panel?

The ColdFusion Application Server service is the service that processes ColdFusion pages. It's ColdFusion Server itself.

The Executive service handles processes like running scheduled events, deleting old client variables cfid and cftoken variables from the registry or database, monitoring ColdFusion Server and restarting it if it goes down. It also checks the mail spool directory for mail to be sent out.

The RDS service is the one that processes RDS requests from copies of ColdFusion Studio communicating with a remote ColdFusion Server.

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What is the "Trusted Cache" option in the ColdFusion Administrator?

By default, when the CF Server runs a page for the first time, it reads the contents of the ASCII text and converts those contents to what is commonly referred to by Macromedia as "p-code". This "p-code" can be thought of as a "native" version of the instruction set originally contained within the ASCII text. By default also, the CF Server caches this instruction set in memory. You can specify the size of the memory allotted for storing cached instruction sets in the CF Administrator.

Now when the page, once cached, is subsequently executed again, the CF Server fetches the instruction set from the cache and executes that, skipping the original step of parsing the ASCII text. However, whatever instructions are contained within that set are reexecuted - database queries, HTML output generation, and so on.

By default, before the cached instruction set is reexecuted, the CF Server checks the original ASCII file to see whether it has been changed since the instruction set was generated. This requires some disk access overhead, which is generally unnecessary in a production server environment. So, to avoid this overhead, you can enable "Trusted Cache" in production, and the CF Server won't check the file on disk for changes once it has a cached instruction set. Any database queries within that instruction set will be reexecuted each time the page is run, though.

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What's the difference between ColdFusion Server Professional and Enterprise?

The 3 biggest are native database drivers, SandBox security and ClusterCats:

• Native drivers allow faster access to databases.
• SandBox security allows different apps to have different security levels on the same server
• ClustCats allows fail-over and clustering. This is useful if your application has more hits/requirements than one server can handle and you move to using clustered servers.

http://www.allaire.com/documentcenter/partners/CF45ServerFeatureMatrix.doc
http://www.allaire.com/documentcenter/partners/CFServer45FeatureComparisonMatrix.zip

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Where should I submit a ColdFusion bug?

Submit it to both Macromedia and CFBugHunt.

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Why do I get an error with my file newapplication.cfm?

Application.cfm and OnRequestEnd.cfm are reserved template names in ColdFusion. You cannot add prefix characters to the templates names, such as Loan_Application.cfm or New_OnRequestEnd.cfm. This will generate an error when they are requested.

To rename these templates, you can add suffix characters to "application" or "OnRequestEnd" for the template name, such as Application_Loan.cfm or OnRequestEnd_New.cfm. Otherwise, you can remove Application or OnRequestEnd from the template name altogether.

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Advanced

Can you run CF 5.0 and CFMX at the same time on the same computer?

You can run them simultaneously, but you have to run CFMX on a different port using it's own built-in web server. When you install CFMX, it asks you if you want to run under IIS or whatever other webserver you have installed or run standalone. Choose the standalone. The default port is 8500 so to access CFMX pages you need to use a URL like http://localhost:8500/mysite.cfm

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Can I hide the .cfm extension of my pages?

This tip assumes you're running a Windows-based machine with IIS as your Web server:

Without getting into too much detail, ColdFusion Server is an ISAPI-compliant application. IIS identifies all requests that need to be parsed by ColdFusion Server by noting the .CFM extension. It then passes the requested page's contents to a ColdFusion Server DLL, which parses your code and returns the resulting output to IIS for display to the requesting client.

Now for the cool part: You can have IIS treat other extensions as if they were ColdFusion scripts. The following example shows you how to configure IIS to pass .HTM extensions to the ColdFusion Server. By sticking with .HTM, the file extensions look like standard HTML-generated pages and don't clue users in to what your back-end might be. Here we go:

First, launch IIS. Right-click your Web site node and select Properties. Locate the Home Directory tab. Under Application Settings, click Configuration. Next, on the App Mappings tab, click Add. For Executable, browse to your CFUSION\BIN directory and locate ISCF.DLL. For Extension, type

.htm

or any extension you want to be processed by ColdFusion. The rest of the options are irrelevant; click OK and exit IIS.

Now, any file with the .htm extension (or whatever extension you specified) will be parsed by ColdFusion Server. That means you can save your ColdFusion scripts with the new extension rather than the suggestive .CFM extension--and everything else will function as normal.

The above instructions assume you're using IIS 5; if you're not, the procedure should be similar enough for you to figure out how to make the changes to the version you use.

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Does ColdFusion run on Solaris Intel or just Sparc?

Just SPARC.

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Does the LINUX version of ColdFusion run on a BSD OS?

At this time ColdFusion does not run on BSD. Some people have hacked it out so that it can run on FreeBSD using Linux Emulation, but this is not officially supported by Allaire.

If you want more information, join the house of fusion cf-linux list at
http://www.houseoffusion.com/

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How can I prevent having to grant script permissions on a ColdFusion server?

Open up your web site properties and click on the 'Home directory' tab. Click the 'Configuration' button and select the 'app mappings' tab and select the '.cfm' extension and click 'edit'. You should see a check box called 'script engine' with this on CF will work with script access, with it off you will need execute access. CF installs itself by default (as per 4.01, haven't checked 4.0 but who cares) as a script engine. This is emminently better from a security perspective as it prevents any 'stray' executables from being executed on the server.

http://forums.allaire.com/devconf/index.cfm?message_ID=252664

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How can I run an executable or batch file on the server using ColdFusion?

cfexecute enables ColdFusion developers to execute any process on the server machine.

<cfexecute
   name="ApplicationName"
   arguments="CommandLine Arguments"
   OUTPUTfile="Output file name"
   timeout="Timeout interval in seconds">

CFX_Execute from
http://www.intrafoundation.com/freeware.html

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How can I time how long pages take to be processed?

If you're running WINNT you can download a freeware CF benchmarker from
http://www.teletrends.com/menu.cfm?locale=cfbenchmark&menu=allaire

This benchmarker generates very accurate CF template execution timings.

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I can't get the ColdFusion Scheduler to work. Is there any other way of triggering a scheduled event?

Some say that the CF Scheduler is tricky, some say it's flaky. Either way, I find NT's AT scheduler much much more reliable. Check out the following article
http://www.allaire.com/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=3328&method=Full

Also, try Arcana Scheduler. It works like a charm (only $40). It's very powerful you can have events schedule every minute. Even if Allaire fixes the problem I wont go back
http://www.arcanadev.com/scheduler/

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I've disabled cfregistry via the CF Administrator. How can I reenable it now I can't access the CF Administrator?

You'll either need to cycle the CF service to get it to see the registry changes, or you could drop a script in your CF Administrator directory that has this code in it

<cfset rs = cfusion_settings_refresh()>

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Is ClusterCats included with ColdFusion Server Enterprise or is it a separate product?

ClusterCATS isn't a separate install. It is an option as part of the ColdFusion Server Enterprise installation.

During the install process, you should see a list of choices and checkboxes for those choices. One of the choices should say "Load balancing and failover" or something like that. That installs ClusterCats.

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Is it possible to run Coldfusion and PHP with Apache at the same time?

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What account does ColdFusion Server run under?

When running any CFML code, that code is run by the CF service, with the rights of whatever user or security context the CF service runs in. On Windows, by default, the CF service like most services runs as SYSTEM. The SYSTEM security context is used by the operating system itself, and has the highest level of privileges on the local machine, but no rights to network resources.

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What can I do to optimise the speed of my NT/ColdFusion Server?

1. Turn Off 8 and 3 File naming if running on an NTSF Partition. This Includes Both NT Server and Workstation. Can be done in the system policy editor or by editing the registry hkey local machine | system | current control set | control | filesystem | ntfsdisable8dot3namecreation | value 1 (0 allows creation). This is good if you are not running ANY 16 bit apps on that server.
2. NEVER run IIS or Cold Fusion on domain controller be it A (PDC) primary domain controller or a BDC (back up domain controller) contrary to popular IIS will run on a stand alone server.
3. Disable or set to manual Computer Browser in the Control Panel under services Good for Workstation and Server Stops the machine from broadcasting or strobing the network with or for members only machine that really need it is the PDC and or PDC
4. In IIS do not create any virtual directories that are really not needed again contrary to popular belief a virtual directory name is not need for each child directory under the root. For instance create the virtual directory called SAMPLES then accessing it by www.zyxcompany.com/samples is the same as just having a directory under the root called samples and accessing it the same way. With minimum virtual directory IIS has less overhead to carry.
5. Never use ODBC to connect to an SQL server if OLEDB can be used
6. Create Minimum number of ODBC connections
7. Remove all samples and directories and ODBC connections that install by default with IIS and CF Server

http://www1.allaire.com/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=11772&method=Full
http://www1.allaire.com/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=11773&method=Full
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/server/feature/tune.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/sdkdoc/bdg/bdgapp05_7ho3.htm

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What effect does altering the ColdFusion Administrator performance related settings have?

http://www.defusion.com/articles/index.cfm?ArticleID=130

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What I try and edit a page via RDS that's just been viewed in the browser, it won't open for 60 seconds. How can I prevent that happening?

This problem will force some drastic changes in the server. There are several registry keys that can be added that effectively eliminate the caching; the cache scavenger as Microsoft calls it.

All of the entries go into the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\InetInfo\Parameters

ObjectCacheTTL (DWORD)

This thing supposedly tells IIS how long to hold on to the files. They have a special value (as opposed to using just 0!) of 0xFFFFFFFF that supposedly disables the scavenger.

Defaults to 10 minutes.

ObjectFilesInCache (DWORD)

This reduces the total memory allowed to be in cache. You can simply set this one to zero.

Defaults to 1000 for every 32Mb of memory.

MemoryCacheSize (DWORD)

This caches system handles and other things for IIS (directory listings, etc.) You can set this to 0 and eliminate the caching supposedly.

Defaults to 3072000 (3Mb).

DisableMemoryCache (DWORD)

Well, this one I found from a reference to a knowledge book in the forums. Apparently, setting MemoryCache to 0 wasn't intuitive enough so they made an an extra value. Set this to 1 and it REALLY will work. I tried this one yesterday and it's all good to go now. KB Article Q191742 for reference.

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What is P-code?

P-Code is what CF compiles the templates into - if you have the templates cached then it reads them out of memory.

If you turn on Trusted Cache, then it'll never look for newer versions of the template, so it runs even faster.

Put the Template Cache up (fairly) big, and let the server do what it has to. As a rule of thumb on template cache size, add together the total filesize of all your ColdFusion templates and multiply the answer by four. This give CF room for maneuvering and it should never have to remove items from cache.

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What order should I install the software on a new ColdFusion server?

If CF 4 is an upgrade:

Vanilla NT - No IIS
Service Pack 3
IE 4.0
NT Option Pack - IIS 4.0
Cold Fusion 3.1.1 - Min Install - No docs or ODBC Dr
Service Pack 4
Cold Fusion 4.0 Upgrade
NT Hotfixes in date sequence
CF Security patches

else

Vanilla NT - No IIS
Service Pack 3
IE 4.0
NT Option Pack - IIS 4.0
Service Pack 4
Cold Fusion 4.0
NT Hotfixes in date sequence
CF Security patches

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What website stress-testing applications are there?

http://www.segue.com/ Segue SilkPerformer
It's very expensive, but powerful, easy to use, with good reporting capability and a good scripting language based on Pascal.

http://www.rswsoftware.com/ RSW E-Load
It's significantly cheaper than SilkPerformer, but I didn't like its scripting and reporting as much.

http://www.merc-int.com/ Mercury LoadRunner
I don't remember too much about the Mercury toolset, although I think they've changed it significantly since I last looked.

http://www.benchmarkfactory.com/ Benchmark Factory
I haven't used this at all, so can't say much about it. It's the only one in the bunch that you can use for testing SMB file services, I think.

http://homer.rte.microsoft.com/ Microsoft Web Application Stress Tool
This one requires that you do more work than the others do, but it's free.

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What's the difference between ColdFusion 4.0 and 4.5?

View the feature matrix at Allaire's site
http://www.allaire.com/handlers/index.cfm?ID=13570&method=Full&Title=Edition%20Comparison%20Matrix&Cache=False

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What's the easiest route to installing 4.5.2 on a server?

If you've got the SP 2 full version, as opposed to the upgrade, you can just install it directly.

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