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fober1
Inspiring
September 7, 2017
Question

ColdFusion Server hangs with use of cfspreadsheet

  • September 7, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 1077 views

Hi,

We are running an application on a hosted CF11 server that uses the cfspreadsheet tag for one of the pages.

Until a few days ago that tag was working without any problems, but now any pages that are using cfspreadsheet don't return anything to the browser.

The browser hangs until ~5 minutes later it shows a "the server did not return any page" error message (different message in different browsers). I get the same results when I run it with my xls testfile with 2 lines of data and ~20 columns, that ran many times without any problems, and still runs fine on my development server.

I did not find anything online about this issue, but as far as I know CF is using the Apache POI library for the cfspreadsheet tag.

The hosting company did restart the server for us but that did not fix the issue. My guess at the moment is that they have installed some security update on the Windows server that messed up how that POI library is used and now it just hangs when it is called by CF and CF doesn't catch that error.

I did add cftry and cfcatch to the script but that doesn't catch any error, the page still time-outs on me.

This is a customer-facing site for us and very urgent, so any response would be very, very appreciated.

Cheers

Franz

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    N
    nic_tunney
    Inspiring
    September 8, 2017

    Ask for log files, recent changes, etc.  This sounds like something the host will need to address on their own, but having that information might be useful to you.

    Nic

    N
    nic_tunney
    Inspiring
    September 7, 2017

    Are you seeing anything in the CF or Tomcat logs?  That is where I would start.  You might also create a page with a very simple spreadsheet for testing, to be sure it is cfspreadsheet that is causing the problem.  Lastly, not sure how your site is set up, but accessing the site directly (e.g. on port 8500) and getting IIS out of the way might help.  IIS might be blocking the return of the file as well.  I'd press on the host to see what patches they have applied recently.

    Nic

    F
    fober1Author
    Inspiring
    September 7, 2017

    Hi,

    Yes, I did create a clean test template with just a single cfspreadsheet tag and a cfdump to see what was read, and tested it with a simple Excel file (2 rows, 20 columns). The same script and data file are running fine on my development server so I'm sure the script is not the problem.

    The site is using IIS and as far as I know Tomcat is not installed (I do not get anything on port 8500).

    Sounds like I should ask the hoster for the log files.

    Thanks

    Franz

    H
    haxtbh
    Inspiring
    September 7, 2017

    Without knowing a number of things it very hard to tell. What hotfix version of CF11 is it. Have you checked all the logs on the server?

    What is the code generating the spreadsheet? What browsers? Do you see any browser console errors?

    F
    fober1Author
    Inspiring
    September 7, 2017

    Hi,

    I don't have access to the server to see which hotfixes are installed, and don't have access to the logs. So I wanted to check here first to see if others had a similar issue, so I know what specifically to ask the hosting provider.

    I have a clean test template with just a single cfspreadsheet tag and a cfdump to show what was read. The same script is running fine on my development server so I'm sure the script is not the problem.

    I tried multiple browsers, and there's nothing in the browser console.

    Thanks

    Franz

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