pf » Linux getting the shaft in ColdFusion 7

April 14, 2005

Linux getting the shaft in ColdFusion 7

I was just looking at the Linux system requirements for ColdFusion MX 7. For supported linux operating systems, it lists:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS & ES 2.1 or 3.0
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.x
TurboLinux 8 Server (Japanese only)

In 6.1 the Supported Linux Operating Systems included:

Red Hat Linux 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9, AS & ES 2.1, AS & ES 3.0
SuSE Linux 7.2, 7.3, or 8.x
TurboLinux 8 Server (Japanese Only)
Linux for zSeries: SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 Service Pack 2 running in 31-bit mode

What I'm wondering is - where is SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9? It has been out since Aug 2004. If I were going to setup a SuSE/CFMX install, I would probably want to go with SuSE 9 - the reason for that, is so I don't have to upgrade my OS, the next time MM drops support for older linux distros (like they did from 6.1 to 7.0). I don't have a problem with MM dropping old distros, I just want to see support for current version, I don't even see where you can get SuSE 8 on their site.

There are also no free linux distros supported eg Debian, or Fedora might be good choices.

I do understand that Macromedia will not support an OS just because a few vocal people think its a good idea. They like to have some numbers, so I started a poll on my site (lower left). And you can also post a comment with the distro you would like to see supported.

I also asked Tim Buntel about doing a survey for linux like they did for Mac OSX, and he said - he would post something on his blog about it, if it is something they think they need community input for.

Update - As of ColdFusion MX 7.0.1 updater 1 SuSE 9 is now supported, Red Hat Linux AS 3.0, 4.0 are supported, and support for Redhat 2.1 was removed.

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On 04/14/2005 at 12:33:43 PM MDT Steven Erat wrote:

Would a better poll be, which distributions would you like to see supported?

Also, a good argument on the importance of Linux as a server can be made from an IDC report last Fall. Here's a couple reviews of that report:

http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3439721

http://news.com.com/IDC+Linux+server+sales+to+hit+9.1+billion+in+2008/2100-1010_3-5479681.html

On 04/14/2005 at 1:00:09 PM MDT Ryan wrote:

I'm not a Unix/Linux server but I think you should consider the difference between supported and 'it probably will work'. Redhat's Fedora is essentially their AS/ES servers in beta form. And Suse 9 probably will work if 8 works with maybe minor tweaks. I think MM limits their 'supported' lists to only the biggest user groups since this requires financial committment to maintain bug fixes, tech support, test, etc. It does not mean it won't work on other similar platforms.

On 04/14/2005 at 1:36:01 PM MDT Pete Freitag wrote:

Your right Steven, that would be a better poll.

Ryan, I know that CF works on unsupported platforms, and I have run 6.1 on both debian, and gentoo. I agree though, it would be nice if MM had different support levels, like works, and supported.

On 04/14/2005 at 1:58:44 PM MDT Ryan Guill wrote:

Have you seen or worked with CF on Mandrake Linux?

On 04/14/2005 at 2:04:35 PM MDT Pete Freitag wrote:

I have never run Mandrake with or without CF.

On 04/14/2005 at 2:27:19 PM MDT Dutch Rapley wrote:

I've been running CF on Suse Linux Enterprise Server 8 for 2 years. It runs like a champ. It doesn't install on Suse 9. Rather then being a platform, like Windows, Linux is merely the kernel that ties everything together. Upon installation, it is up to the admin to choose which packages he/she wants to install, depending on the function of the server. Each Linux distro offers a different set of packages, depending upon the target audience. This flexibililty is nice, b/c you can only install what you want to install. It would be safe to say that RedHat and SuSE target the enterprise.

When installing CF, some packages, along with your distro, are required to be installed. SUSE 9 offers an updated set of packages than what is included on SUSE 8, so it really is a compatibility issue. If I recall corretly, the initial issue with SuSE 9 is that the installation uses deprecated syntax for an command that has been updated in Suse 9. I couldn't change it to the correct syntax b/c that part of the .bin installation file was encrypted.

MACR doesn't say you are liminted to only RedHat, SUSE, and TurboLinux. They just say that those are the only suppoted platforms. You are not limited to the packages that are included on a particular Linux distro. If you can find the right combination of required packages, the you should be able to install CF with no issues.

For example, the SUSE installation I'm using for CF is under 400MB. Remember, I am only running what I need.

On 04/14/2005 at 2:59:12 PM MDT Oguz Demirkapi wrote:

We have some servers with CFMX 6.1 & 7 on Debian Woody & Sarge without any problem.

On 04/14/2005 at 4:04:28 PM MDT Cliff Meyers wrote:

We've been running CFMX 6.1 on Fedora Core 1 for a year now and haven't had to restart the server once. Rock solid.

The big problem with the supportability comes from some of the 3rd party tools (particularly the Verity engine) since they will only support certain OSes and versions. If you don't use Verity my guess is that you could probably CF on just about any variant of Linux out there.

On 04/20/2005 at 2:42:51 PM MDT Anonymous wrote:

I am running SuSe 9.1 and tried to install ColdfusionMX 7. It appears to install but will not configure the apache web server connector. The server will start but will not parse the cfm pages (since the connector failed). I've tried to troubleshoot this, but am I to understand correctly that no matter what ColdfusionMX will just not run on a SuSE 9.1 box?

On 04/25/2005 at 8:01:42 PM MDT Yves wrote:

A comment for the above...

I haven't installed ColdFusion on Mandrake, but I have installed various versions of BlueDragon on Mandrake 9.x and 10.x... The first version of BD was 3.01, way back when.... That box is out of service, but ran very well. I set up a Mandrake 10 and BD 6.x box for someone and couldn't use Mandrake's default apache installs, probably because of their auto-upgrade / auto-downgrade apache thing... Source download/compile/install. Worked great and has been running for about 300 days with no problems.

On 04/26/2005 at 6:51:33 AM MDT zondo wrote:

and even trying to install on RHES 3.0 it fails, from an out of the box config the apache connectors are all wrong...

On 04/26/2005 at 7:13:23 AM MDT Aaron wrote:

Hey, I just wanted you to know that coldfusionMX 7 works out-of-the-box in Fedora Core 2 and Fedora Core 3. It can install itself as a service in these distros, where it can't in many others... so it's strange it's not "supported". Isn't that just the #1 problem in Linux? A lot of dedicated linux servers are running Fedora these days, so this is great. It also has much much better .jar support for things like IBM's jt400 and jtopen classes. I actually had a hard time getting those to work in some Fedora environments (GoDaddy servers especially).

On 04/26/2005 at 8:11:07 AM MDT Oguz Demirkapi wrote:

Of course there are some issues depending on configuration and installation. As an example on Debian Sarge, we need to configure connectors etc. as manual. And a cron job to start CF on boot.

But these simple settings must not be a "real" problem for a Linux user who has selected Linux as server OS.

On 04/26/2005 at 1:29:44 PM MDT steve wrote:

I am running CF 7 on FC 3 no problems..

On 04/29/2005 at 12:39:22 AM MDT Steven wrote:

Does anyone know a detailed fix for CFMX7 on SLES9? This is extremely troublesome. SLES9 is such a wonderful OS. I don't understand how they can come ou with a product that is supporting the previous OS version. Anyhow, some guidance would really be appreciated. I have been racking my brains for a few weeks now and have gotten nowhere. There also isn't much info on the net about this either.

On 05/12/2005 at 11:40:17 PM MDT reinrev wrote:

so far , Mandrake linux is one of the best option for Coldfusion MX 6.1/7 Server. we tried several distro

On 09/08/2005 at 2:57:29 PM MDT Randy Schmieder wrote:

Trying to get CF 5 to run on Suse 9.2. My problem seems to be mentioned above (04/20/2005 at 2:42:51 PM EDT Anonymous) "...The server will start but will not parse the cfm pages (since the connector failed)...." Is this worth chasing down, or should I give it up?

On 09/14/2005 at 10:32:38 AM MDT LinuxInductee wrote:

I'm also trying to get CFMX 7 to run on SuSE Enterprise 9. I'm installing SP2 ATM, hoping to solve the problem. There is a problem with the connector scripting, you can follow this link for more info, but have yet gotten it to work...though it's said to work. http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/messages.cfm/forumid:14/threadid:985

I'm installing the 'multiserver' option, where you can run CF in Jrun separately, enabling you to scale/cluster either the web and/or CF separately as necessary. If someone has found more information on this...I'd love to see it. I'm really enjoying SuSE so far and CF is a no brainer. Would love to kill existing Windoze machines.

On 09/24/2005 at 1:06:06 PM MDT SC wrote:

Try the free CentOS, I've been running CFMX7 on it for quite awhile along with the free Sybase server

On 10/15/2005 at 10:38:09 AM MDT Chas wrote:

I spoke with the Macromedia Coldfusion Product Manager some months ago (late 2004) and SuSE9 would be supported. Though in Oct 2005 I've just downloaded a new release of CFMX7 that supposedly supports Suse Enterprise Server 9. The isnatallation scripts run well, but not quite working - this is currently under investigation.

On 11/15/2005 at 10:21:03 AM MST Scott Fitchet wrote:

They aren't going to want to support the "free as in beer" versions because those customers don't have $$!

However, if it's going to run on RHES then it's going to run on Fedora. I wish I had documented the tweaks that managed to get FC4/CF61 working for me but it's not tough ... (there was a shared object in the wrong location). It would make business sense for them to let the "free as in beer" crowd help themselves. <b>We all know CFLinux is a great platform.</b>

On 12/07/2005 at 12:20:31 AM MST Don Vaillancourt wrote:

I've installed CFMX 7 on SuSE 10 no problem and ColdFusion starts/stops no problem.

But I get 500 errors trying to access the CFIDE.

Where do you folks usually start looking to get things working?

On 01/10/2006 at 12:38:37 PM MST Sven wrote:

Stop your bitchin, it works on fc4 just fine. Just be sure to turn off SELINUX.

On 01/10/2006 at 3:41:50 PM MST LinuxInductee wrote:

I've finally gotten it working on Suse Enterprise 9. It's configured as a 'distributed cluster' and seems to be working fine. I did have to get in touch with a Novell tech to work out the details of executing the wsconfig.jar file manually; however, all looks good.

On 01/16/2006 at 5:20:23 PM MST Cody Caughlan wrote:

I have CFMX7 running just fine on [Open] SuSE 10 on Linux (opensuse.org).

On 01/25/2006 at 1:17:01 PM MST JimmyNolan wrote:

Hey LinuxInductee would love to know the steps you took to get CFMX7 to work on SUSE 9 and the details on the wsconfig.jar file, thanks

On 01/25/2006 at 3:18:26 PM MST LinuxInductee wrote:

Well, I've written all my notes down, I will try and summarize quickly here then later point to some better HTTP based documentation.

1. Get coldfusion-70-lin.bin ($$$) 2. Distributed ( meaning server on one box and cf on another box ): If different subnet between web and JRun, then grant permission to the web server(s). ( JNDI ) <cf_root>/runtime/lib/security.properties add web server IP like this 'jrun.trusted.hosts=192.168.1.10', then restart JRun 3) Install Java 1.4 ( jre ) check with 'java -version' 3b) You should be able to open the CFadmin panel on the JRun box if you installed with the internal web server; otherwise, continue... 4) Copy cf_root/runtime/lib/wsconfig.jar to your web server filesystem 5) Run the wsconfig.jar on the web server: java -jar /tmp/wsconfig.jar - server coldfusion - ws Apache - bin /usr/sbin/httpd2-prefork - script /usr/sbin/apache2ctl - dir /etc/apache2 - map .cfm,.cfc,.cfml,.jsp - v - host 192.168.1.100 # this is the jrun server ip - coldfusion 6) Copy the CFIDE/ directory to the web root on the web server, this must match exactly with the root of jrun 7) Confirm cfadmin runs on the web server 8) Adjust the Mapping root to the web server root, again, this must exist exactly on both the web server and the jrun server. 9) Disable the internal jrun web server on the jrun server: cf_root/runtime/servers/default/SERVER-INF/jrun.xml WEBSERVER attribute:deactivated to 'true' , restart jrun 10) You are live.

My notes are very jumbled, but this was a first attempt to pulling them together, please forgive typos. Also, let me know if something doesn't wash, I might have translated my chicken-linux scratch incorrectly. :D

Let me know how it goes, Jimmy.

On 01/30/2006 at 9:44:59 AM MST Jimmy Nolan wrote:

Thanks LinuxInductee, been sick will try to muddle through with my very limited Linux knowledge.

Have since downloaded and installed SUSE 10 and like how easy it is compared the SUSE 9.

However don't know how to get "CFMX7 running just fine" as Cody Caughlan did. If you're listening Cody would love some direction.

On 03/08/2006 at 5:33:56 AM MST LinuxInductee wrote:

I tried to put jrun start commands in boot.local and it hung the server after starting the admin application... any ideas on how to start jrun at boot? using suse enterprise linux 9 and jrun4/cfmx7

On 03/09/2006 at 5:17:35 AM MST Cody Caughlan wrote:

Jimmy Nolan-

Hm, all I did was download the Developer edition from Macromedia.com and follow the basic installation instructions. As much as I remember (I did this a few months ago) I didnt stray off the beaten path. One thing I do remember: I did not try to install the Apache web-server adapter but let CFMX serve the pages itself.

Email me at: spamspit@gmail.com and let me know if I can help (yes, that is a spam pit email, perfect for publishing to a public web page, but I will still check it to see if you send anything).

On 03/09/2006 at 5:46:50 AM MST LinuxInductee wrote:

I got it to run at startup on SuSE Linux.

I used the /etc/init.d/boot.local file and inserted the following line:

/opt/jrun4/bin/jrun -nohup -start cfusion &

I hope this helps.

On 03/30/2006 at 5:33:02 PM MST subuaz wrote:

One other thing you need to do with SuSE 9 and SuSE 10 to get past the dreaded "java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: "0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1" issue:"

vi /etc/hosts

look at the line under # special IPv6 addresses

comment out ::1 localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

replace with ::1 ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

Presto, the connector wizard will work. Still has issues with knowing the everything in the path with some JREs, no idea why.

&laz;

On 04/10/2006 at 3:42:21 PM MDT Edgar Febres wrote:

I've been trying to get CF 7.0.1 running on RHES 4.0 but have not been able to. I saw that it is supposed to run under 4.0. I was able to run it over Fedora Core 4 though. What is the difference?

After installation, I can't see the bin directory in the coldfusionmx7 directory.

Any suggestions?

On 04/10/2006 at 4:22:36 PM MDT Steven Erat wrote:

Is this thread still alive?!

Edgar, ColdFusion 7.01 does support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, but not Fedora (any version). You posted a comment to my blog about the C++ compatability pack. Is this the problem you are having? Please post here (or on my blog entry) the details of the problem.

On 04/10/2006 at 10:24:15 PM MDT LinuxInductee wrote:

Hmmm, I have it running on SuSE 9; however, JDBC to SQL Server 2k is slowwww.. anyone have a clue about that? I hit the same db with a win2k cfmx7 and it's fast...

On 09/13/2006 at 4:00:05 AM MDT Intabo wrote:

Thanks a lot for the hint concerning 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1

I had to chenge the connector-script, the startup script and installed the needed libs and compat-rpms. But I still got an exception in the log when i started the installer. After changing the hosts, ecerything works.

On 01/06/2007 at 9:29:52 AM MST Dave Livingston wrote:

I have struggled getting cf installed on just about every SUSE version since 8. I finally documented how I got it working on 10.x. Here is my blog post about it. It's really a beat down and even with my instructions I seem to be the only one i my shop that can get it running.

http://cfblog.com/dave/index.cfm/id/Installing_CFMX_7_02_on_Suse_1