Activate license for ColdFusion 2023

[Manoj36229141q88d]

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. 

[Manoj36229141q88d]

@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.)

[Manoj36229141q88d]

@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. 

[Manoj36229141q88d]

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.

[d_goldcamp]

I just upgraded from ColdFusion 2012 to ColdFusion 2023.  I have a valid Enterprise license for ColdFusion 2023.  I provided the license key during the install and successfully completed the installation.

The instructions that I have from the previous system administrator that he created when he performed the installation of ColdFusion 2021 say to go to the licensing and activation page of the ColdFusion Admin console and enter the license number into the activation field.  My instructions say that when I activate the license it will fail and I will be prompted to generate an offline activation code, then go to a machine with internet access and go to https://www.adobe.com/go/coldfusion-activate and then upload the activation file to the site.

The issue I am having is that I am never prompted to activate the offline instance of ColdFusion 2023 after the normal activation fails.  One site that I found stated to go to the packages page in the ColdFusion admin center and add a package.  The instructions say that once I select add a package I would be prompted through a dialogue which would allow me to access an offline activation page.  My issue is that all available packages are installed and the option to add a package is also not available.

Please help!!!

[d_goldcamp]

Note:  This is a server that does not have internet access and it requires an offline activation.

[Charlie Arehart]

Did you follow the steps outlined in the response marked as the answer here?  See also the few responses that follow, with additional info.

Let us know how that goes. 

[d_goldcamp]

Hi Charlie, I followed the instructions on the "cf2023-offline-activation/" site from your previous answer, but the instructions appear to leave out an important step that probably seems obvious to most people but has stopped my progress:  I created the 'generate_request_file.cfm' and placed it under cfusion/wwwroot, but the instructions don't explain how I'm to run this file.   I tried navigating to it in the browser and just get a 404.   Thoughts? (Thanks in advance!)    I also tried activating the license in the CFIDE LIcensing and Activaiton screen after creating that file, in the hope that it would make use of the file, but nothing happened.

[Manoj36229141q88d]

@d_goldcamp , you would need to access it through the url   where the file is located for ex. https://cf.blah.com/abc/generate_request_file.cfm and there would be file generated under  cfusion/WEB-INF/cfusion/bin/.config with .json extenstion. 

Also, please ensure your file (generate_request_file.cfm and Activate_Offline.cfm later part ) is accessible where your .cfm files are accessible. 

[d_goldcamp]

Thanks Manoj, I was able to run that file with your info...However, instead of getting an output file written to .config, I get an error dumped to the screen:   Variable PATH is undefined.

For some reason, it doesn't see the PATH environment variable.  odd. 

[Manoj36229141q88d]

I'm not sure what variable you are  defining. But, I  haven't paramterized anything in the file instead passed the actual values to speed up my process.

[Charlie Arehart]

The error's not actually from the code, but from the underlying code being called via the Admin API.

In fact, someone else reported getting the same error (during their attempt to offline activate CF2023 license 5 months ago). That post is here. 

And I just asked them there something I'll now ask d_goldcamp:

Might it be that perhaps you are using (for the currentSN) the serial number of what you (or someone there) had bought as an "upgrade" license? What that means is that you get a 50% discount for upgrading from the immediately preceding CF version--and when you put in a serial number (in both the CF Admin or CF installer) you would be asked to provide BOTH serial numbers.

In the case of the admin API code on that page you linked to, note how it has commented-out a "previousSN" variable (in both the offered templates). I wonder if the code fails with this error if one DOES use an upgrade license for the "currentSN" variable but leaves commented-out this other previousSN var (which should hold the license of the serial number of the immediately precending CF version, so the one for CF2021 in this case).

Sadly, I don't myself have such an "upgrade" license to test this with.

[d_goldcamp]

I contacted Adobe support and they provided me with a different serial number to use.  I launched the admin console from my client workstation (Which has accesss to the internet.) and ColdFusion was able to successfully activate our instance of the application.  Thank you all for your assistance in this matter.

[Charlie Arehart]

That's great to hear your problem is resolved. And in fact getting another serial number from Adobe was the solution the person in the other thread reported 5 months ago. (Sorry, I failed to ink to it in my last reply. I just corrected that.) 

But I'll ask you now since this is fresh: did Adobe tell you why a new serial number was needed? More specifically, do you know (or did they tell you) whether the issue was that your cf2023 serial number was for an upgrade license, as I discussed in my last comment?

I'm just trying to help folks who may hit that error in the future.

Finally, for folks still following along, I'll note that I updated that blog post (the one with the code) to address problems raised by folks here and in the other forum thread.  It's rare that I do that to CF Portal posts by others, but it seemed warranted and I hope it avoids some of the confusion people encountered. 

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

@Manoj36229141q88d  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.

[Manoj36229141q88d · 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.