Coldfusion 2018 instance manager issue

I'm trying to create a new instance using the CF2018 instance manager. I can see that the new instance folder is getting created and files were copied but the webpage never comes back to say that the process was completed. It happens whether I choose to create the windows service or not. I don't see any errors in the CF or Windows logs. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen once the folder is created and populated.

By @porkslap

To answer your question, the following happens in the Instance Manager page when ColdFusion finishes creating a new instance:

• 'Done' appears next to Step 2;
• A link appears, with link-text "Return to Enterprise Manager".

When you click on the link, CFAdmin will refresh the Instance Manager page, displaying all the instances, including the one you've just created.

See attached images.

From your description, I can think of only one possibility. You did not wait long enough for ColdFusion to completely create the new instance.

Porkslap had asked also, "is there a way to manually install instances in CF2018?" The answer is yes, using the CF Admin api. And it's just 2 lines of code:

<cfscript>
createObject("component","cfide.adminapi.administrator").login("youradminpw");
createobject("component","cfide.adminapi.serverinstance").createServerInstance ("instancename");
</cfscript>

The first line logs you into the admin (via this admin api) and the second creates the instance, exactly the same as if you did it in the Admin UI. (And yep, there's a deleteServerInstance method also.)

Note that the first line's login method does assume you don't need to provide a username to login, which is why I show just providing a password. If you do need to specify a username (such as if the secure profile was enabled, or multiple admin users were enabled), there is a variant of the login you'd want to use. And that login method of the Admin API's administrator.cfc is documented here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/configuring-administering/coldfusion-administrator-api-reference.html#login

That doc has many other admin API CFCs and their methods, though not all. For example, it does not document that serverinstance.cfc and its methods, which do include ones for starting/stopping/restarting instances, as well as ones for adding/removing a cluster, and adding/removing instances in a cluster.

As some may know, you can get to further documentation of the Admin API using CF's CFC browser, which assuming you are running CF locally on port 8500, and have RDS enabled, would be available here:

http://localhost:8500/CFIDE/componentutils/componentdetail.cfm?component=CFIDE.adminapi.serverinstance

Finally, FWIW, while there are no listed options for the createServerInstance method, such as to control whether it should create a Windows service, I find that it DOES create one by default. Sadly, the deleteServerInstance method does NOT remove that. If needed, one can do it from an elevated command prompt with the "sc delete" command naming the service by name, for example:

sc delete "ColdFusion 2018 Application Server test"

All that said, I would expect that you should get the same problem in creating an instance this way that you did in the UI.

Still, if you want to give it a shot it's certainly easy enough.  Let us know how it goes.

Porkslap, just to be clear, creating instances does indeed work in CF2018 (in the Enterprise or Developer or Trial editions). I just did it, and it took about a minute. But since you're saying it's not working, let me ask a few questions.

First, when you note that "the webpage never comes back", what happens if you return to the page for the Instance Manager, refreshing it. Are you saying that the newly created instance does not appear?

• If it does appear, then it has worked. But note that CF does NOT start the instance by default for you (regardless of the choice of the Windows Service option). You can click the play button for the instance, or if you did create a service you can start it.
• If it does NOT appear, then we need to do more digging.

If the instance is NOT there, let's note first that you are confirming that a new folder of the name you gave it does appear in the CF folder (as a sibling to the cfusion folder). That's a start. More on that in a moment.

Next, if you look at the \ColdFusion2018\config\instances.xml, does it list both instances (cfusion and the new one)? It should. If it does not, is there any chance that there is a permissions issue, where the user running your cfusion instance may not have permission to write to that folder?

As for logs, I can confirm that there are 0 log changes in the cfusion instance tracking anything about you adding the new instance (not even in the audit.log). And there are 0 logs tracked in Windows event logs, unless you DO tell it to create a service (in which case there should be a line in the System log, when the service is created). You also didn't confirm if you DO or do NOT see the service when you told it to do that. You may have meant that it should be obvious that it did not work, but I have to ask.

Finally, if you look at the new instance's folder, and check out its properties, how many files and folders does it show? I just did it and the new folder had about 1200 folders and about 10k files. Yep, that's a lot. You may have only half that. 8k of those 10k are split between files in the wwwroot/cf_scripts and the hf-updates--and the latter will have more depending on how many updates you had applied to the cfusion folder before creating the instance. Bottom line, if you have somehow far fewer than about 5,000 files in the instance folder, then indeed something seems amiss.

Let's see what you may have to say to the above and we can go further from there.

Hello,

Please let us how much time it is taking to create the Instance, also let us know whether the service was created when you select option for createWindows service.

Thanks & Regards

Ravi