Activate license for ColdFusion 2023

[ManojK5]

Hello,

I have installed CF 2023 with a trail edition  which turned out to be developer edition.

and now currently have a license for enterprise.

I'm not quite sure how to convert the developer edition to enterprise. as ,  when I'm trying to activate the license from CF admin console --> license & activation. it shows "Please enter a valid serial number."

I'm thinking I should have a separate installer for enterprise edition? register the CF product with the license to get the installer?

Can someone provide guidance on how this would work to go with an enterprise edition? 

Thanks.

[Dave Watts]

In my experience with previous CF versions, there's one installer for all versions: trial, developer, standard, enterprise. I don't think that's changed with 2023. In those previous versions, the trial version runs for 30 days, and then becomes the developer version. You should be able to install a valid serial number to convert trial or developer to standard or enterprise, or standard to enterprise.

In your case, this doesn't seem to be working. I'd open a support ticket or send an email to cfsup@adobe.com.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[Charlie Arehart]

There is no separate installer, only one. And yes, during that install you could have put in the serial number. You did not. 

And so the page you point to is where you would now enter that serial number. You seem to doubt/question if that's what you should do. Have you tried it?

[Charlie Arehart]

Dave and I were writing at the same time, but I do still stand by what I said. 🙂 And I look forward to hearing how things go, Manoj. 

[ManojK5]

@Dave Watts  @Charlie Arehart  thanks for the response. well,  I tried to activate the license multiple times but it says invalid serial number".  may be need to check with the sales rep or open a ticket(doing as we speak). 

@Charlie Arehart  glad you responded. I found an article of yours. not quite sure if I understood it correctly. please see the highlighted in the screenshot below.

[Charlie Arehart]

Let's address both points:

1) First, about it saying you offered an invalid serial number: you say above that this is CF2023. Are you entering a serial number that you were given for use with CF2023? Or might you be trying a license you had used for CF2021 or earlier? That would not work. 

And does the serial number start with 1187- or 1185- ? If not, that's some non-CF serial number. If that happened, where did you get the license? In an email? from an Adobe web site? If you paid Adobe for a license (and you were the one who paid), you should find it at https://account.adobe.com/products, or perhaps at the older https://licensing.adobe.com/. 

2) As for what that screenshot (from my talk) is saying, it's simply indicating how while you were running CF as the Trial and now as the Developer edition, there is no "activation"--because there is no license entered when running in those modes.

(FWIW, if one enters a license and it IS activated, but later somehow Adobe deems the license should be DEactivated, then you would see you were back to the Developer edition.)

[ManojK5]

@Charlie Arehart , our serial number starts with 1185.  I tried giving the serial number at the time of installation with full edition. but, it has given me developer edition. and yes, this is a serial no for CF 2023 which was obtained from our  vendor. 

@Priyank Shrivastava. ,  I did open a support ticket and waiting to hear back from them.

[Charlie Arehart]

As I'd noted below last week, it will certainly be interesting to hear how this all resolves.

In the meantime, one last suggestion: look in the cf logs folder.. Do you have a license.log?  If so, check what it's reporting. 

[ManojK5]

I don't see a license log file under cf logs and nothing on the catalina logs.

[Charlie Arehart]

Fair enough. That's why I'd said "if so", about whether you may have one. Again, let's see now how things go for you with Adobe.

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

@ManojK5  Kindly open a ticket with my team at cfsup@adobe.com. We will take care of this issue.

[Charlie Arehart]

While your stepping in to offer help is good to see, Priyank, it would have been helpful to hear from Manoj on what I'd asked above. It may help others reading this or finding it in the future.

Indeed, I hope you or Manoj will inform us of the ultimate resolution. 

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

Hi Charlie,

I will update the thread with the resolution. My colleague is working with Manoj.

[ManojK5 · Accepted solution]

Finally, I was able to activate the license using offline activation (still not sure why it failed although I had internet access ).

anyways, this link prolly might be helpful for someone who doesn't see Generate Activation Request. under "License & Activation".

Also, I felt the instructions might have to be more clear to understand. but, anyways, this is what I did --> https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2024/02/cf2023-offline-activation/

Thanks.

[jeff38011374seqk]

I had the very same issue.

I had a trial version of Coldfusion 2023 which expired and turned into developer mode. I bought a Standard Coldfusion Sever license from adobe and tried to enter that license into the CF Admin screen - but kept getting an "invalid serial code" message. No typos - I copied and pasted and tried manually entry. All with the same result.

Then, using your offline solution (and my same serial code) I was able to get the license to work.

[Charlie Arehart]

Jeff and Manoj, since you found only the offline activation to work, I'd like to ask you both: are the servers in fact offline (no internet access)? That would certainly explain why that solution worked/was needed. Otherwise it really is as simple as dropping the license into page to convert the trial or dev edition to standard or enterprise, without even need of a restart let alone any reinstall.

Or maybe you'll say your server is online/has internet access. In that case, perhaps it's that when cf reaches out to the url used for activation, that request is blocked. Maybe you have a firewall limiting outbound connections. Note that the page on activation lists the domain names called, if you need to white-list them. 

Be aware also that if offline activation was required (and cf can't reach the server to check on that activation), you'll have to deal with this is ways discussed in those docs. That's why it's best to white-list those domains, to avoid such challenges.

As for truly air-gapped servers, well, folks running those are used to (or learn to deal with) the challenges that imposes, all for the sake of security of course. 🙂 

[SajanM]

Hello Manoj,

I'm trying to do a offline activation of CF2023 and looking for help.

Once you have the generate_request.cfm  and place that in cfusion/wwroot folder, what is the next step?

Now sure how to run it? Can you please advise?

Thanks

Sajan

[Dave Watts]

You can run it from the offline server console using a locally installed browser or wget/curl etc. The URL will look like this:

http://localhost:{listening number for instance}/generate_request.cfm

Usually, the listening port for the built-in CF web server will be 8500, I think.

[SajanM]

No luck...

I just did the above and the page was blank, no response on the page. (8500 is the port)

Also, there is no json file in cfusion/bin/config folder per the documentation.

Thanks

[SajanM]

Got the file. it was in the .config hidden folder 🙂

All good. Thanks for the help!