Update: Since this post was made, the final version of Update 3 was released and should be used instead.
ColdFusion 11 Update 3 early access build has been updated to incorporate all the suggested changes. ColdFusion build number should be 11,0,03,292245(PreRelease) after applying the latest build.
For more details refer Issues_Fixed and ReleaseNotes documents.
Thank you for your valuable feedback.
NOTE: Users who have already applied ColdFusion 11 Update 3(PreRelease build) should follow below mentioned steps to re-apply the update:
1. Rename updates.xml file located at <cf_install_root>/cfusion/hf-updates/.
2. Navigate to CF Admin > Server Update > Updates.
3. Re-download the ColdFusion 11 Update 3.
4. Install it.
The steps in the above should include the same instructions found on the CFAdmin Auto Update page. It should mention that you need to rebuild your connecter.
ColdFusion 11 Update 3 Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Update Level: 03
Update Type: General
Update Description:
ColdFusion 11 Update 3 includes support for JDK 8, Tomcat 7.0.54 and other platforms/servers/databases besides ~195 bug fixes (internal and external)
in AJAX, Charting, Caching, Database, Language, Mobile Support, Net Protocols, Security and other areas.
For details click on the “Read More” link below.
IMPORTANT: After applying the update, the connector should be re-configured using wsconfig tool.
It is in {cf_install_home}/{instance_name}/runtime/bin.
Note that this update is cumulative and includes fixes from previous updates.
@Philip Mervis
I reported this : https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3865484
which includes a work around.
Please vote there and maybe Adobe will sort it out.
Interesting read, but he is right, Simon that is.
Adobe don’t care about their own bugs, the number of times I have rung them on the phone only be told I will need to pay for the support is a joke.
Adobe have no clue in this area of business at the moment, they haven’t for nearly 15 years now.
But where Simon is right, is the same old story. Adobe are far too slow in fixing what should/needs to be fixed and unless it has been paid for they refuse to fix it.
Instead, they will close the ticket 6 years later saying it will never be fixed. Just look at all the bugs being closed right now, I have seen around 10 closed, for that exact reason. But in fairness, things have changed and the bugs may no longer be relevant.
But that is not the issue!!
The issue is that Adobe leave bugs there for months and months and months and months.
I have one bug raised, it is a serious bug and Adobe haven’t looked at it for 2 years. But its serious because 25% of the time on production the code is throwing an error. Not my code, But ColdFusion internally.
Now I raised it two years ago and to this day, it is still not fixed.
Sorry but that is piss poor from Adobe and has been one of the main reasons that I am no longer writing ColdFusion code anymore.
I got sick and tired of waiting for Adobe to pull their head out of their bum, fix the issue so the site would work. Now if I had paid for the support like they wanted me too, it would have been fixed there and then.
I even shot an email of to the production manager, asked why this bug has not been touched.
Not even a word back from him either.
Sorry but Adobe, you seriously need to change your business practice and how you deal with ColdFusion bugs that you have created and just get things working in a timely fashion.
Otherwise YOU WILL KILL ColdFusion!!
Problem is there is only a hand full of people willing to speak and be ridiculed for this bad practice from Adobe, others will just move on and leave ColdFusion with no whimper from them.
Is that what Adobe wants, people to just leave so they can just kill it off, like they want too.
Because if things don’t change in how Adobe do this, they will see the end of ColdFusion.
I have no idea how much CF consultants cost either but I *do* know my rate – and if I’m going to spend ‘many weeks’ troubleshooting an issue – I’m just going to call someone like Charlie who quite possibly can pin point the issue much quicker.
As far as ‘tuning’ – tune for what? Are you hosting a Twitter like service where you get 12 billion hits a second? Are you a financial service who needs compliance, security, redundancy, etc? There is no ‘out of the box’ configuration for CF (or any other language for that matter).
Adam, we have never taken the option 3 you mention. As I said, we have spent many weeks gathering logs and trying all manner of things previously, but with no detailed explanation or help from Adobe. They just cannot explain nor document TomCat issues. It’s guesswork. There are thousands of posts on the subject and most conflict of them with each other.
My point is that only CF consultants seem to be able to fix these issues, so without such issues they would be largely out without work. That’s a rather nice position to be in. Not doubting their ability etc, but a fact it is. ColdFusion tuning is a dark art that Adobe wants to remain left in the dark.
I appreciate servers are complicated things with finite resources and different usage patterns etc, but Adobe after DECADES of development, have never released a tool to help people “tune” their server or find the elusive optimal settings. Surely that is not impossible? Why haven’t the CF consultants created such a tool I wonder… lol?
Simon, no one should *need* to pay a consultant to fix stuff Adobe can’t be bothered fixing. And I doubt anyone would suggest that.
However in “Reality Land” where we all reside, Adobe are a bit shonky in their attitude to providing a professional level of support to their clients, so it’s left to a coupla options:
1) roll your sleeves up and work around whatever it is yourself;
2) get someone in to do it for you (eg: Charlie or one of is ilk).
You seem to be perceiving there is an option 3 here:
3) wring one’s hands about it, and it’ll fix itself.
I have never known that to be a successful tactic.
I have no idea what Charlie charges (and are none the wiser from reading his blog article), but I doubt it’s truly extortionate. And anyone deciding to engage him will no doubt be made aware of his rates from the outset, and there’ll also be an agreement as to what the budget might be, and within which Charlie has to stick (the budget might only afford one hour of billable time or something).
And if one was to engage Charlie, one is paying for a *huge* amount of experience in his particular field. He is probably peerless in the areas he focuses in. So probably worth the money. However there will also be a bunch of cheaper ppl out there who might be able to achieve the same ends for less money. It’s a free market, to a point.
However you spin this, these issues are entirely Adobe’s fault, and not those of consultants like Charlie.
He’s just trying to solve people’s problems. And put food on his own table.
—
Adam
First of all, why should we pay consultants for issues that
Adobe should fix? They release a bug-ridden update and then issue all sorts of hotfixes, then give no support or assistance and then we have to turn to a CF consultant. No consultant can fix such problems in “an hour”. We have paid thousands of $ to consultants in the past, and then a new CF release breaks the fixes. It’s a cycle of endless doom that only favors the CF consultants, since Adobe won’t provide the correct level of support.
Adobe should support their product first and foremost, and stop telling people to “ignore errors”. Adobe also seem to know next to nothing about Tomcat when it comes to support. They say “tune this” and “tune that” but it is mostly guesswork. They even told me that they did not understand Tomcat and then their dev team “do all that stuff”. Not very inspiring.
@Simon, to each his own on their opinions of CF and Adobe.
As for your reference to private consultants and their prices being “a joke”, well, I beg to differ of course. I don’t know for sure if you’re referring to me (since I commented on the matter above pointing out available consultants, myself included).
But I started to write a reply here in retort (to explain how getting such help can be a small price to pay, and indeed great value, often just an hour or less for even seemingly thorny problems).
But I realized it was getting long for a comment here. So I chose instead to write a blog entry (and I elaborated a bit more there than I would have here). For those interested, see:
“The price for ColdFusion troubleshooting consultants is a joke. They’re taking us for a ride”
http://www.carehart.org/blog/client/index.cfm/2014/12/6/on_the_cost_of_CF_troubleshooting_consultants
I have to agree with you Simon, the times I have rung Adobe and asked for support for their own bugs, I got asked to pay for it.
Sorry, but if you create buggy software, you should be supporting it free. Just saying!!
I recall when they broke the UI tag CFGRid, we couldn’t move away from ColdFusion 8 because of this bug and they wanted us to pay for the fix. Will never happen Adobe!!
@Rafael, interesting reply from Priyank since they never explained what the bug was when they issued the hotfix. I don’t think they know at all, otherwise they would have properly documented and explained it. Our server is full of errors after the hotfix was applied and they haven’t got a clue what the problem is basically.
We asked for support last week to help with a logging issue and were told we needed a “support contract” for what turned out was a one byte edit of a config file LOL!
We are moving away from CF now and are not investing any more resources in it. The product is flakey, there is no support for tuning it; you are left on your own in the dark when problems arise, and When you need someone to help you can wait months for an email reply from Adobe. The existing private consultants prices are a total joke – they are taking us for a ride! Just my two cents after a decade of CF dev.
@Rafael, you say in comment #50, “I don’t think anybody at Adobe actually knows about ColdFusion”. I realize you’re expressing frustration, of course, but certainly the entire ColdFusion team does “know about ColdFusion”, and cares passionately about it (as evidenced in many ways, despite what some may surmise).
I think you’re really meaning to say “no one in the front-line Adobe marketing and customer support area seems to know about CF, and CF support in particular”. And that may well be true, and not a new sad state of affairs.
Adobe is a very big company, with hundreds of products. It seems CF is (as ever) a bit of a red-headed step child, when it comes to 99% of folks at Adobe. It clearly doesn’t fit in with the rest of the “Creative Cloud”, and never will.
So while yes, it can be hard to get attention and love from the average (and front-line) Adobe folks, let’s not leave the impression that “nobody at Adobe actually knows about ColdFusion”, because that really is just not true. 🙂
So, I don’t think anybody at Adobe actually knows about ColdFusion. But I was eventually able to track down a phone number for ColdFusion support: 866-318-4100 (pressing 7 gets you ColdFusion). A single support incident costs $249. There’re also rumors of Gold and Platinum support plans but nobody at Adobe seemed to know how much those cost or how one goes about purchasing them. I got transferred around a lot and then gave up.
@Rafael: also put the question on Twitter and other public social media. For one thing, Anit will follow-up if you put it on Twitter. He’s one of the few diligent ones / ones with professional pride / respect on the Adobe ColdFusion Team.
If you want, write it up and I’ll put it on my blog.
We need to stop tolerating Adobe not offering their clients timely support.
—
Adam
Charlie, thanks for your help. I did finally manage to get somebody from adobe to help. Both cf.install@adobe.com and cfinstal@adobe.com seem to be valid email addresses. Calling 877-687-1520 did finally get me to somebody very nice and helpful. They’re looking into it. And yes, as crazy as it sounds, there seems to be a hotfix 14 bug with cfhttp calls to secure (https) urls. I’ll post more once I have more info.
Folks, one can indeed get paid support for CF, whether from Adobe or others. I list several alternatives (myself included) at cf411.com/cfconsult.
But I realize some will prefer help “from the source”, or may want bug fixed which only Adobe can provide. Still, often some problems can be resolved by experienced non-Adobe folks, so if you have any difficulty reaching Adobe support, I just wanted to offer alternatives. I try not to make that offer too often, as some hate sales pitches (but I’m point out others there, not just myself).
As for that cfinstall/cf.install address, I’m pretty sure that’s intended for free “installation” support primarily. Some people may be emailing it hoping to get free general support, and perhaps sometimes they may get it, but I don’t think it’s something one should EXPECT other than for installation support. (And I would not be surprised if issues related to updates are not really technically about “installation”, but if anyone–especially from Adobe–wants to correct if I have that wrong, please do.)
@Rafael, back to your problem, I’d say it would surprise me that the update would affect cfhttp calls. Of course, I realize you’re saying that uninstalling it “fixed” things, but I’ll say that here could be more one could do to perhaps better understand what the nature of the slowness really is.
For instance, are you saying that if you look at the http.log (in the CF logs), which tracks every CFHTTP call out of CF, you see that the CHTTP requests show their duration really to be excessively long? (If you do not, then the slow requests would not seem to be about CFHTTP. Just a sanity check to consider.)
And even if they do show there, you’ll see in each log entry the URL that was called. If you may call different URLs (different servers), is it perhaps that some are slow and others are not? That could be diagnostically significant. Even more important, are the URLs pointing to the CF server itself? (Many do that though it’s often troublesome as now a given request takes up 2 request threads.) If so, is it the calls to the CF server itself that are slow? Is it that other CF requests that do not do CFHTTPs are not slow?
Finally, are you using a monitoring tool like the CF Enterprise Server Monitor, or FusionReactor or SeeFusion? They can help you see while the request is running exactly what line of code is executing, which could also help confirm that CFHTTP is the culprit (or not). They can also provide other useful diagnostics which could explain your problems.
I realize you (and readers here) didn’t want a lesson in troubleshooting. I’m only replying because I hear your desperation, and some of this info could help any reader with any problem in CF. Let me know if it helps, or if you may prefer to hear back only from Adobe on this matter.
Adobe lists cf.install@adobe.com as the correct email on this page: http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html. There’s a “Mail now” link on the bottom right. And one of the chat agents gave me cf.install@adobe.com as the correct email as well. It’d be pretty ironic if it turns out that that’s not the correct email.
I tried calling 877-687-1520 to get support, but I was on hold for 20 minutes, after which somebody told me that he needed to transfer me to some other department. So now I’m on hold again.
@Rafael, I suggest reporting your issue to the Adobe Bug Tracker at http://bugbase.adobe.com
We started having serious performance issues with cfhttp calls after installing the ColdFusion 10 hotfix 14. Uninstalling the hotfix fixed the problem. Any idea how I can get help with this? Seems like it’s no longer possible to get a paid support request for ColdFusion. I sent an email to cf.install@adobe.com but never heard back from anybody.
@Adobe folks, while the entry above talks about how to get the refreshed update 3 if one already has it, it does not tell people how to get it if they do not.
Why not at least point back to the earlier blog entry that first introduced the prerelease of Update 3 (and which DOES have the needed steps): https://coldfusion.adobe.com/post.cfm/coldfusion-11-update-3-is-available-for-early-access
Also, as I asked there, could you please consider adding here a mention that, in order for people to get back to the original URL for regular CF updates, they would switch it back to http://www.adobe.com/go/coldfusion-updates. (Yes, some may notice this comment, but some may not bother reading them all to find this important piece of information.)
As always, just trying to help.
Just wanted to post for folks that may run into this issue in CF11. When using serializeJSON on an cfc instance we were getting the following error:
java.lang.Double cannot be cast to java.lang.String
This code worked in CF9 (we skipped 10), but broke after installing CF11. However, applying update 3 fixes it. I don’t see that as being a “fix” in the release notes, but it did in fact fix our issue. Hopefully this update can be “blessed” by Adobe soon so that we’re not running our production on beta software.
No my comment had nothing to do with current issue, my thinking was more for future ease of use. For example, lets say I installed preview update and it fails for me. I would like to just go, oops roll me back please.
But having said that, the manual process to remove and update new previews is why software have revision numbers and they should be used once and once only, that way when updating I can say ooh revision has changed let me check it out. Otherwise if I didn’t come here, I would think there is no difference to the update. But more importantly, unless something major happens to ColdFusion we should not be doing any manual roll backs.
@Vamsee Thanks for your reply.
I actually abandon the CF11 and cf11 testing for the moment.
After all the installation I still came with non working scripts that fully work on CF10.
Still “strange” issue with
* cache
* other issues “maybe” with cfcontent but I did not took more time to dig into that.
I will wait the final release and certainly update 4.
I hope the issue with the spreadsheetAddRows will be resolved. I am struggling with performances with the POI and spreadsheetAddRows for the production of large XLSX (+65000 rows, + 60 columns).
Thanks again for your prompt replies.
+1 for semantic versioning
+1 for semantic versioning. This problem has been solved in a rational, sensible way.
I appreciate a simple way in the Admin to choose which updates to install. The new Firefox Developer Edition shows “You are subscribed to the aurora update channel” in the About section. I like the channel subscription analogy – stable, beta, experimental, etc. You could more easily have developers beta test new features by having a dev system subscribed to the beta channel, for example.
It makes me so happy to see this updater get a full round of non-production (hopefully) testing before its final release. All these speed bumps that you’re ironing out now would have been really annoying production bugs that reduced people’s faith in CF updates. Kudos for shortening the feedback loop. Remember, release early and often!
To piggyback on what Charlie and Andrew were saying– if you haven’t seen it, check out the update screen in the Railo administrator. They have a series of very well-explained radio buttons were you choose if you want stable updates or development updates. It’s very clear and I’ve never heard of anyone getting confused. The best part is, it just works out of the box without configuration changes. That’s something to consider moving forward.
The second thing to consider (which I discussed with a few of you at CF Summit) is moving to more of a semantic versioning scheme. Every released patch has a systematic, incremental version. This means you don’t have to deal with a ‘refresh’ of update 3, since this would just be a new version. For instance, the first update could have been 11.3.0 and this would have been 11.3.1. Now, there’s no need to uninstall anything– you just add the newer version top and every distinct released update from Adobe would always have a very specific version number. And if 11.3.1` was deemed stable, you would simply move it to the stable update channel with the same number. If not, 11.3.2 would just come out in a few days and repeat 🙂 This is by far the industry standard and is another item for you to consider to help with the updater process.
@Nimit, this is not urgent like the other comments above, but you replied to me and Andrew saying:
“@Andrew & Charlie: There was an issue(NPE) while uninstalling the previous update build because of which we shared a workaround to install the latest update. That issue is fixed now and we need not follow these steps going forward.”
I don’t know about Andrew, but my observation had nothing to do with errors. I/we were just saying: “while having the prerelease testing phase for updates is great, why not incorporate it more seamlessly into the regular update process–just clearly tell folks that it’s a prerelease, while it is.”
Make more sense? The point is, folks having to do the prerelease updates manually is causing friction. There’s a balancing act that needs to be found: make it easier to see/apply the prerelease version of an update in the normal update mechanism (without need of fiddling with the URL), while also making it clear to folks who may see it show up that is IS a prerelease (in case they may NOT be interested in applying a prerelease version of an update).
Again, I realize you have reasons why you did NOT do it this way, for now. He and I are just wondering if that decision might be reconsidered, seeing the challenges people are having (and given that this is the first such prerelease attempt).
Before you send the hotfix. I re-re-install CF11.
* I tried to download the update 3 from http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/coldfusion/PR/updates.xml
Error checksum
* I install it manually. It works.
* Then I remember that it is required to re-install the connector. I did it with IIS connector.
And now error 500 ….
Not smooth!
Can you please download the update directly from this URL http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/coldfusion/PR/11/hotfix_003.jar and install it using below mentioned command?
1. Run command prompt as administrator.(If you are on windows)
2. java -jar hotfix_003.jar
Thaks for your prompt reply.
No I am not able to install again update 3. I have an error in the update admin page. After clicking on “check for update”
* It display the update from friday 07 november 2014
* + at the bottom of the page an error
The getColdFusionInstances method was not found.
* and the button install or Re-download does not work.
I hope that help.
@Andrew & Charlie: There was an issue(NPE) while uninstalling the previous update build because of which we shared a workaround to install the latest update. That issue is fixed now and we need not follow these steps going forward.
@Eric:
1. Have you re-downloaded the update?
2. Are you able to access CF admin? If yes, then please check the CF build number after installing the update.
Thanks for the reply Vamsee. I am not sure it is the best place for this conversation but let’s continue.
* First I installed CF11,
* then update 2,
* then udpate 3 from http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/coldfusion/PR/updates.xml
* I removed update 3 as you recommend Renaming updates.xml
* Then I wanted to reinstall update 3 but it show the update from Friday, 07 November 2014
* Then I noticed the error with the cache. When I do a cacheget it stop the page processing
* then I clear cfclasses
Now it is worst
* I have this error on all pages
The tag handler ftp does not have a setter for the attribute parserKey specified in the Tag Library Descriptor.
The CFML compiler was processing:
A cfcase tag beginning on line 337, column 14.
* I have an error in the admin server update after checking for the update from http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/coldfusion/PR/updates.xml. It shows the update + an error message
The getColdFusionInstances method was not found.Either there are no methods with the specified method name and argument types or the getColdFusionInstances method is overloaded with argument types that ColdFusion cannot decipher reliably. ColdFusion found 0 methods that match the provided arguments. If this is a Java object and you verified that the method exists, use the javacast function to reduce ambiguity.
I hope that could help you .. and me.
Great to see that you took comments on board (for the update and for the release notes). Thanks for offering this new variant.
That said, I do hope you’ll get to updating the docs to clarify what changed between these two updates, for those trying both and wanting to understand how this has changed.
And I’ll add a vote for Andrew’s proposal to consider a way to offer (and clearly identify) prerelease updates in the normal update mechanism. I realize there are challenges there, but if it could be done well it certainly could be an improvement. (And perhaps future updates would be as substantial and call for such prerelease handling, such as later updates to Tomcat, the connector, database drivers, and maybe someday even the jvm within CF.)
Any reason the updater can’t do this for us? For example, if we want to use a pre-release beta update. Can we not just see that its pre-release in the updates?
At least then the vewrsion/revision wont need to be manually removed/edited or whatever you have to do. It should just work!!!
@Nimit – yes, sorry for the false alarm. For some reason when I went to the CF Admin today, I ran into an issue where I had to remove/re-add the CF Admin site into IIS due to an “internal error”. Forgot to add the cfscript v-dir back in, causing the issue.
@Tom: We will update the release notes with the detailed information about signature changes.
@Dave @ Adam: Thank you for your feedback. We will add section to the release notes which will have information related to this update build number 11,0,03,292245(PreRelease)
@Chris: http://www.adobe.com/go/cf11_update3 this link is not live yet. It will be available with the final update release.
Have you tried refreshing the CF admin page?
If you click “read more” on the updates page, in the admin, it goes to a page not found via link: http://www.adobe.com/go/cf11_update3
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