Andrew's ramblings

Things to know when installing ColdFusion 9 then updating to 9.01

Tags: ColdFusion 9

After reading about the following blog http://blog.kukiel.net/2011/03/coldfusion-901-installer.html , I wanted to elaborate on this some more from my experiences as well.

I tweeted about this ever since the ColdFusion 9.01 update was released, and even sent the tweet directly to the product manager as well.

Apart from the fact that it takes extra time to install both, there is also the added complexity on how you do go about this installation as well.

So what could possibly be a problem here?

Well lets look at what is one of the major changes in ColdFusion 9.01, and that is the fact that it has finally got native IIS7 support. Now I guess this will only affect those who actually use IIS instead of Apache, but it adds so much extra time in installing that it begs the question, like Paul asked as well, why has this FULL version that is downloadable not been upgraded to be a complete 9.01 release?

I guess as I tweeted and wrote in an article somewhere else, the only people that can answer this is Adobe.

The problem comes about when you install ColdFusion 9.0, when you install this you have to make sure that the IIS configuration has the option of the IIS6 compatibility, otherwise you will not be able to install the JRun connectors for IIS. Then you can test the installation once setup, now this took me awhile to work out myself, but rest assured that if you don't do this step for IIS then you will not be able to have a correct installation.

Now enter ColdFusion 9.01 update.

When you install this update it will only update the current installation, that means that if you haven't done the required full installation of ColdFusion with the IIS compatibility things then change. I will say this is not a deal breaker in any way shape or form for most people, because once it is installed for a production server that is usually it.

The problem arises when you are a developer setting up new sites in IIS7, that will begin to cause you headaches down the track. And not to mention a lot of unwanted support to figuring out the problem, which in most cases if you are not aware of this gotcha you might not even know where to look.

When I first found this problem I did what most people would do, and that was to install CF9 and then the update to 9.01. Now if you go and create a site, you expect that the connectors have been installed correctly, and in a manner that you might be used to. But when you go and create another site in IIS7, most people will not even think about the fact that in IIS7 and ColdFusion, changed things. Once the site is created and you then try to run the ColdFusion application, you will get an IIS7 error, and you might be scratching your head as to why.

Well lets look at the most default configuration with ColdFusion connectors and IIS, and that is by default the connectors are setup to apply the ColdFusion ISAPI runtime to ALL websites, which is fine if you are not going to create any more websites into IIS. But when you do create this website the fact is that the settings are not actually applied to the level for all websites at all. which means you have to do one of two things, manually create these settings or go back to removing the connectors and then installing the IIS6 compatibility mode, and then reapply the connectors so that they will apply to all websites.

If you know what you are doing this might not sound that bad, but if you don't you could be spending much more time into working out the problem than you really would have liked.

So what is the solution then?

Easy Adobe need to fix this so that the ColdFusion download is a complete full 9.01 installation, and they need to provide the fact that if the connectors are installing on IIS7, that the connectors actually work when installing to ALL websites, which also includes adding of websites later. And to do this the connector needs to actually apply the ISAPI runtime at the top level of IIS, and not the way it is currently doing it.

It wasn't until I had done this many times that it began to click as to why when creating a website, the connectors would never be setup like in previous version of ColdFusion. And that is as I stated only something Adobe can answer for their reasoning behind this decision or lack of making our jobs easier.

I hope that people start to email Adobe about this and the more people that ask for it the more likely that this will get fixed.

TweetBacks

#Adobe #ColdFusion When will 9.01 be a full install that supports IIS7? http://goo.gl/9ChRk @Adobe Mar 29, 2011

Things to know when installing ColdFusion 9 then updating to 9.01 - http://goo.gl/Jdbj7 Mar 29, 2011