CF10 App server running after reboot; but website unavailable until service restart

[WolfShade]

Hello, everyone.

I recently returned to a job I previously had after several months at a different job.  Upon my return, I inherited someone else's dev system (my previous dev system, apparently, had been reimaged and given to someone else, after I left.)

This system originally had CF9 server on it (the ColdFusion9 folder is still here) and now has CF10.  Using the built-in web server (no IIS, no Apache.)

Every time I boot/reboot the system, I can see in Computer Manage System that CF10 Application Server is, indeed, running.  But if I try to open any of the pages that I am working on, I get an error message that the site can't be found.

I go into Computer Manage System, go to Services, right-click the CF10 Application Server, choose "Restart", wait for it to finish, and voila!, I can get a working page.

Does anyone know why this is happening, and/or how to remedy it so that CF will work immediately after boot/reboot without going to restart the service?

Thank you,

[Anit_Kumar]

Hi WolfShade,

This sound to be strange. Did you confirm in the task manager, that CF service is running (I am sure, you confirmed). When you get the error, did you check the exception/application log for exact error messages. Did you try with any static pages like html. What does Event Viewer log points to?

Try delayed starting of the CF service. It may help.

Regards,

Anit Kumar

[WolfShade]

Thank you for your reply, Anit.

I am not seeing anything in the Event Viewer logs (application or system) that might indicate any issues.  I am currently trying BKBK's suggestion and am in the middle of a reboot.  But as soon as I get the CF service running, again, I will check CFAdmin logs to see if there is any indicator, there.

Thank you,

[BKBK]

WolfShade wrote:

I go into Computer Manage System, go to Services, right-click the CF10 Application Server, choose "Restart", wait for it to finish, and voila!, I can get a working page.

Does anyone know why this is happening, and/or how to remedy it so that CF will work immediately after boot/reboot without going to restart the service?

The following procedure might help reset the start procedure.

1. While in Services, choose to stop the ColdFusion 10 Application Server.

2. Right-click on ColdFusion 10 Application Server and select Properties. Confirm that the Path to Executable is "C:\ColdFusion10\cfusion\bin\coldfusionsvc.exe". Select Disabled as the Startup Type.

3. Restart Windows.

4. Return to Services. Right-click on ColdFusion 10 Application Server and select Properties. Select Automatic as the Startup Type, and press the Start button.

5. Henceforth, when you restart Windows, the ColdFusion 10 service should start automatically.

[WolfShade]

Thank you for your reply, BKBK.

I got to step 4 of your suggestion, and when I clicked on START, I get an error message: "Windows could not start the ColdFusion 10 Application Server on Local Computer.  For more information, blah, blah, blah..  Service-specific code 0."  Basically, view the Event Logs.

"The description for Event ID 256 from source ColdFusion 10 Application Server cannot be found.  Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted."

- EventID: 256

  Qualifiers: 49153

  Level: 2

  Keywords: 0x80000000000000

- EventData:  CreateProcess - The service has returned a service-specific error code.

Now I can't get CF to start.  I am going to keep it set to Automatic start, and reboot to see if that will fix it.

UPDATE:  Rebooting the system with "Automatic Start" for CF10 brings me back to my original scenario - CF10 services are running, but no pages (IE says it can't find the site; using troubleshooter just says that the connection was refused.)  As soon as I "restart" CF10 Application Server, the CFAdmin comes up just fine.  CFAdmin logs do not give any indication of a problem.

[WolfShade]

I did finally find an error in a log.  System log shows:

"A service process other than the one launched by the Service Control Manager connected when starting the ColdFusion 10 ODBC Server service.  The Service Control Manager launched process 1676 and process 1684 connected instead."

But, if this is truly what is causing my problem, why is CF10 App Server showing as "started" in Services?  Wouldn't this indicate that another process booted CF App Server out of the way as it was trying to start??

I'm confuzzed. 

[WolfShade · Accepted solution]

Still don't know why CF was showing as "started" when clearly it wasn't - but I did find the culprit.  WebTrends.

I have no idea why WebTrends was installed on a dev system (isolated from the internet), but there it is.

I uninstalled WebTrends, reboot the system, and (surprise!) the CF Server is displaying pages with no issues.

Thank you, BKBK and Anit, for your help.

[BKBK]

@Wolfshade

Nice to hear you tracked it down. Thanks for sharing the solution.

[Charlie Arehart]

Good to hear you solved it. If you may still want to know exactly why that was causing an issue, I would propose something I didn’t yet see anyone else do: look specifically at the CF log called coldfusion-out.log. That is basically the “console log” when you run CF as a service, and it would be interesting to know what was in that log if you compared the startup messages in your working and failing examples.

The log tracks info generally for days if not weeks or months (depending on what else is logged in the file and how quickly it fills), but it may well give you insight into what was up. I’m not saying there WILL be something there. As Anit said, what you experienced was odd, but if there will be something logged anywhere about this, it may be there.

If nothing else, I leave this here for anyone else who has a similar sort of problem in the future.

/charlie

Re: CF10 App server running after reboot; but website unavailable until service restart

created by WolfShade <http://forums.adobe.com/people/WolfShade> in ColdFusion Server Administration - View the full discussion <http://forums.adobe.com/message/6199851#6199851

[WolfShade]

Hi, Charlie,

I went into CFAdmin and looked at the coldfusion-out.log.  It has entries from Aug 2012 through Feb 2014, the latter date being about the time that I noticed something wrong.

I'm guessing, but I think that despite Services showing CF10 Application Server as "started", it really wasn't.  That could explain the lack of entry between 20 FEB 14 and today.

Likewise, the coldfusion-error.log was similarly truncated as of 20 FEB 14.  Server.log is not showing anything related to this.

I'm not sure WHY WebTrends was interrupting the CF Service during boot, but apparently Windows thought that WT was shoving CF out of the way when Windows tried to start CF.

(shrug)

Thank you for the suggestion.