Can't manually instal patch 11 on ColdFusion 2018

[Phil5C93]

I have several production servers that can't access the internet so I need to do the update manually. When I try to install it the I get the message that it's already been installed. I'm the only one that patches the servers so I know I didn't install it and the admin shows its updated to 10.

I'm trying to figure out how to either get around the issue with manually installing the update or finding a way to trick the CF admin into thinking it downloaded the update and using the update file I downloaded. Any suggestions?

[Charlie Arehart]

When you say manually installing, are you going to the comma d line and running:

java -jar yourhotfix.jar?

You would need to provide or be running in the path of the Java command and that jar. And do you have only one instance of cf, or multiple (with other names in the cf folder, as a sibling to cfusion other the  jre, config, and uninstall)? 

Let's leave it at this and hear back from you. 

[Phil5C93]

Thanks Charlie.

I have a single instance of CF 2018 on Windows 2018 using jdk-11.0.10. I open the command prompt as administrator and CD to <cf_root>/jre/bin/ I then run the command java.exe -jar E:\prog\ColdFusion\updates\hotfix-011-326016.jar

The installer comes up, I provide the install path to CF and click Next. At that point a dialog comes up that says "Updated This update is already installed." This update hasn't been installed yet so I'm not sure whats going on.

I've scanned the registry and don't see anything stored that indicates the current patch installed. I looked at the ColdFusion2018\cfusion\hf-updates\updates.xml file and it shows I'm patched up to 10. Update 11 isn't represented anywhere in the ColdFusion2018\cfusion\hf-updates\ directory. The directory ColdFusion2018\cfusion\lib\updates only has the update 10 jar in it. I've searched the ColdFusion install directory and cant find anything named or containing hotfix-011-326016.

[Phil5C93 · Accepted solution]

I found the issue. Part user error and part bad error handling on Adobes part. I had been selecting the wrong path so of course the install would fail. The installer didn't give a message like "ColdFusion wasn't found at this location". Instead it said "Updated This update is already installed."

I should have caught my error sooner but the extremely incorrect message from the installer didn't help me at all.

Sorry for waisting your time @Charlie Arehart 

[Charlie Arehart]

I'm glad you've solved your problem, and I hear feeling that a problem was that the update UI (the manual installer) did not warn you when you pointed to an invalid directory.  FWIW, I don't experience that problem.

Instead, I DO get a clear error msg in the update UI, reporting "The specified directory is not valid". I'll share more details below, but I wanted to make clear first that our experience is do different.

I'm confirming that when I run CF2018 update 11 from the command line, if I let (or change) the UI to point to a location (a drive or a folder) where CF is not installed, I get this error in the update UI:

The specified directory is not valid.
Select the home directory of your ColdFusion 2018 installation. For example, /Applications/ColdFusion2018
For J2EE installation, it is the WAR directory containing WEB-INF, CFIDE and META-INF

I realize there MUST be some explanation for how our experience is so different.

Are you sure first it's not that the first folder it was pointing at isn't ALSO a directory with some CF installation within it? 🙂

FWIW:I was on a Windows machine, where I did not currently have update 11 installed at all yet, and I got the error whether I ran the cmd "as admin" or not.  And as you, I used the JVM within the CF install. If it may matter, CF is installed on my D drive, so I used this cmd to be explicit:

D:\ColdFusion2018\jre\bin\java -jar D:\ColdFusion2018\cfusion\hf-updates\hotfix-011-326016.jar

[Phil5C93]

This is what I think happened. At one point I tried installing in the ColdFusion2018 but had the drive letter wrong. This gave me an error "The specified directory is not valid". I tried the cfusion directory and I got the message "Updated This update is already installed." At this point I think I stopped paying attention to the path and focused on the message the installer gave me.

I was able to reproduce this on 4 servers. I finally found a post on Adobe for the CF 11 update 7 early access. Another user ended up with the same issue. https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2015/10/coldfusion-11-update-7-is-available-for-early-access/ At least I'm not the only one.

Regardless of the number of people this has happened to, the messaging is clearly wrong. You wouldn't be happy with an online purchase process if it said "Your purchase has already been paid for" if you entered bad data.

[Charlie Arehart]

Phil, what you raise is a reasonable concern.  You should now raise it as a bug at tracker.adobe.com. That's where Adobe watches for bugs reported, not here sadly.

Share a simple, clear restatement of the issue (that if you mistakenly point it to the cfusion folder, you get that message instead of a simpler warning like if you point to ANY OTHER folder).

Others may chime in to vote or comment/ask questions, and eventually Adobe should also see it and respond in some way. You'd get notified by email of any such comments.