Cf Admin errors in CF2021 After upgrading to Update 18

[Dordrecht]

After I upgraded to update 18 on CF2021, I find that many of the administrator pages display errors like those below. I backed out the upgrade back to CF2021 Update 13 and the errors persist. The errors did not occur prior to the upgrade attempt. Anyone kno0w a solution?

(P.S. Sorry to be asking so many questions lately. I've been a ColdFusion user for 25 years and am much better at programming than debugging software versioning and installation issues.)

[Dave Watts]

It looks like something happened to /CFIDE/administrator/jvm.cfm. I wouldn't expect this file to be changed when you upgrade, but it looks like it was in your case maybe? Anyway, I'd look for a backup of that file, then back up the current bad file and restore it with the backup of the good file. If you're doing your own filesystem backup - which you should! - you should be able to find the last good copy from before it was overwritten. Otherwise, I suspect CF itself has a copy of it somewhere ... but I'm not sure where offhand. If you have to go that route, you might want to drop to the command prompt, navigate to the CF root directory, then type something like this:

dir jvm* /s

[Charlie Arehart]

A few thoughts.

1) First, to Dave's suggestion: note that the reference to the jvm.cfm is about it being the referrer--the page from which the failing page was requested.  So that's not the source of the error. BTW, I realize Dave knows what a referer page is. 🙂 Heck, he's probably who first taught me about them nearly 30 years ago! I clarified the meaning for other readers, and I suspect he just didn't notice the referrer indication. And hey, our eyes have done a LOT of work since then, getting old like us!

So as for the original problem, there can be many possible explanations. I will say that I've not seen that specific reported error before.

2) My initial suspicion would be an error during the update install, and yes also perhaps during the update uninstall you did. There is a log of each in the cfusion/hf-updates folder for the update number that you installed/uninstalled. Look at about line 70 of either log. Is the count of fatalerrors or nonfatalerrors other than 0? If so, how did you uinstall CF? via the admin or the command line? If the former, was CF running as a service with localsystem as the user running the service? If the latter and you're on Windows, did you use "run as admin" to open that command prompt?

3) Then there can be errors during the install of package updates (which happen automatically if an update incorporates updates to packages you're running). Those package updates take place on the next CF startup that's kicked off after the update. Look at the coldfusion-out.log. Any errors during the package updates? If there are errors there, what are they? 

If there are no errors during the update or during the package updates at startup, we then need to consider other possibilties.

4) Since you jumped from update 13 to 18, note that as of update 17 there was a known issue calling for "clearing the felix cache" to resolve various issues (and that problem has hit more folks since that note listed its 3 known issues). You may want to try that. Just stop CF, delete the folder felixcache folder in cfusion/bin, then start CF. CF will recreate that for you. Then try the Admin.

Some may suggest you could delete as well the cfusion/wwwroot/WEB-INF/cfclasses. I would recommend renaming it instead, as there can be some useful info in there for diagnosing certain other problems. Anyway, do that also while CF is down, then restart it and test the Admin.

5) If none of that is it, let's here what you have to say and we can respond based on that.

I'll note that if you may just need to "get it done", I'll say I'm confident we could find and resolve whatever was amiss in a remote screenshare consulting session. We may not need more than 15 mins, my minimum time. If interested, you can find my rates, approach, satisfaction guarantee, online calendar, and more at carehart.org/consulting. I could even meet this evening if this is time critical. But I realize you may not see this is a task worth paying for assistance to resolve. Just wanted to offer that.

Others may offer still more "things to try".   Let's see how things go.

[Dave Watts]

Yeah, I probably shouldn't respond from my phone. Thanks for the heads up!

[Dordrecht]

Thanks, @Charlie Arehart 

Referencing your #2:

I did both the install and the uninstall from the CF Admin. The install and uninstall logs show no errors:

-----

Installation: Successful.

1659 Successes
0 Warnings
0 NonFatalErrors
0 FatalErrors

-----

Uninstallation: Successful null

1481 Successes
1 Warnings
0 NonFatalErrors
0 FatalErrors

-----

I'm not sure what is meant by "If the former, was CF running as a service with localsystem as the user running the service?" In Services, the Cf Application Server shows "Local System" in the Log On As column value. 

#3:
The server.log shows the following errors around the time I did the install/uninstall. I'm not sure which of those caused the errors. Possibly I had the lib dir open in file explorer during the installation?

"Registration error for service manager : .http://127.0.0.1:8993/PDFgServlet/.Reason: SERVER ERROR"

"Unable to install SQL package: coldfusion.server.ServiceRuntimeException: java.io.FileNotFoundException: (CF_Home redacted)\lib\neo-drivers.xml (The requested operation cannot be performed on a file with a user-mapped section open)"

"Unable to install htmltopdf package: java.lang.NullPointerException: Specified service reference cannot be null."

#4

I did the suyggested folder operations. They did not fix the issue.

[Charlie Arehart]

By "if the former", that followed my question, "how did you uinstall CF? via the admin or the command line?" And now you've clarified that, as well as that the cf service is running as local system.

As for the ongoing errors, I don't recognize them as having an obvious solution. Maybe someone else will. My suspicion is that you have made some manual configuration, whether in the admin or at the file system or command line. 90% of updates "just work", and 99% work with a couple of extra steps. Yours seems to be in the 1% that remain.

Some would give up and reinstall. Others would suggest you uninstall and reinstall the update, while others may have you try to remove and RE-add all packages. Those may or may not work. And you seem to be saying you did the post-install workaround steps suggested on the Oct 2024 cf update. 

If you just want to get things solved, I suspect we can do that in looking together at any of many things on your machine via a remote screenshare consulting session. We might solve it in as little as 15 minutes, my smallest billing increment. For more on my rates, approach, satisfaction guarantee, online calendar and more, see carehart.org/consulting.

Otherwise let's see how things may go here. 

[Dordrecht · Accepted solution]

@Charlie Arehart , thank you for the reply.  I went ahead and uninstalled CF altogether, then reinstalled CF2021 up to hotfix 18 yesterday morning. I used the admin to install the updates rather than using comand line. (I seem to have had better results dong it that way in the past.) Every install seemingly worked without any errors, and I joked to my supervisor that it seemed like a day I should purchase a lottery ticket. 🙂  My plan was to examine the logs for install errors more today, whcih I did. The only error I saw from yesterday's installs was:

-----

Feb 19, 2025 10:37:46 AM Information [main] - Package htmltopdf started...
Feb 19, 2025 10:37:46 AM Error [main] - Unable to install htmltopdf package: java.lang.NullPointerException: Specified service reference cannot be null.

-----

Oddly, I see in the admin when I click the htmltopdf package that it is installed, so I'm not sure what happened there:

I examined all of our code and we don't have any uses of cfhtmltopdf, so I expect that error will have no effect on us even if not installed.

Thank you again for your assistance!

[Charlie Arehart]

Glad that you feel your original problem is resolved. As for this last reply, a couple of thoughts:

• This will save you time (next time): you did NOT need to apply all those updates one at a time, as your wording suggests you did. You need only ever do the latest one you want. They are always cumulative (since CF10). That said, you should read the technote for each that you skip...and each technote indicates that at the top in a blue box. (Sadly, many people don't read even the technote of the update that they are applying.)
• And indeed, to that very point--and about this remaining issue you raise--there is a solution. If you look at the technote for update 17 (which you got by going to update 18). It has a "known issues" section, which includes this:
  • "The PDF Services page in ColdFusion Administrator does not load even with the HTMLToPDF package installed. As a workaround, clear the Felix cache (<cf_home>/cfusion/bin/felix-cache)."
  • Do that, while CF is down, and restart. You should find then that the package appears as normal. And that way, if anyone later does want to use it, it should work.
  • Indeed, I will add that clearing that felix-cache folder is something folks just may want to start doing after each CF update. (You can simply delete the folder while CF is down, and it will be recreated on restart.)
• Finally, about your observation of installing the update via the admin or via the command line, there are pros and cons to each. that was in fact why I asked which you'd done, when you were having the previous problem. Some favor always running one way, some the other. And there are problems some hit that make thim think they can "only run updates one of the ways", but I can help resolve those. But that's another discussion for another time. 🙂

[Dordrecht]

Thank you, @Charlie Arehart. I did not run all of the updates. I ran Update 11 and 13, then proceeded to 18, because at one point we found that we couldn't get update 13 to install without running 11 first, so I did what we did historically, having started from scratch

I was aware of that technote for upddate 17, but had not noticed any issues loading the PDF Services page in ColdFusion Administrator (if I even tried it). The error I posted above was, to my knowledge, from the log of the installation, not generated by trying to access the admin page, so the technote seemed unrelated.

I'll be updating to update 18 on a different test server today, and will keep these things in mind.

Thanks again!

[Charlie Arehart]

Ok.

1) On your last point, I appreciate why the technote recommendation didn't seem to apply based on what you saw. It does, and while the error message is not mentioned in the technote, I'll note that I'd observed it and connected the dots for folks in my post on the update (offered the same day), specifically in my section on the "known issues" for that update. Just sharing that to encourage people to look beyond even just the technote. I offer a simple subscription form on the blog. As always, I just want to help. 🙂 

Anyway, once you confirm things on the other test server, you'll want to come back and address it on this other. As I said, clearing the felix-cache addresses still other issues and should just now be considered good hygiene. (Sadly, the update mechanism doesn't "just do it", but I've asked Adobe to consider it.) 

2) On your first point, well, I was going on your having said, "Every install seemingly worked without any errors". And that's why I admitted I was left to make an inference. I just see a LOT of people do that laborious effort, unaware it's not needed. 

3) And yep, sometimes (after dozens of updates), it can be that some one requires itself to be done before any others.  BTW, in such cases Adobe also often will have created newer cf installers that incorporate all updates to that point--but people often just keep installing the original installer. FWIW I did a post on the most recent new cf2021 installer back in 2022. (And I include there where to get the latest cf2021 installer, even today.)

HTH

[Dordrecht]

The test server installation went perfectly, @Charlie Arehart, and I cleared the felix-cache. Sometime next week we do the same on two production servers. Hopefully they will go smoothly as well. Thanks again!

[Charlie Arehart]

Sweet. Can you pick one or more of the replies as an answer, to help future readers?