CF2018 Handler Mappings missing in IIS 10

[aliciam29605858]

We are in the process of upgrading to ColdFusion 2018 from ColdFusion 2016 on Windows Server 2016, using IIS 10.  CF2018 update 7. Initially, we created a new IIS site and everything worked fine.  Then using the wsconfig tool, we pointed back to our existing IIS two sites that were previously configured with ColdFusion 2016.  *.cfm files wouldn't display.  Further investigation shows the 'Handler Mappings' for *.cfc and *.cfm are missing for the existing two sites.  The mappings do exist for the new IIS site and at the server level.  Not sure why the existing sites didn't 'inherit' those mappings, but they did inherit *.cfml, *.cfr, *.cfswf.  We've tried 'unconfiguring' and reconfiguring using the wsconfig tool several times.  Currently we're using the Universal site connection and there's only one wsconfig/{number} directory.

We're going to attempt to add the handlers manually to each existing site, but is there a better way?  This is the first server we've tried upgrading, should we expect this to happen on all of our servers? 

[Dave Watts]

It's not exactly clear from your response, did you first uninstall the previous connectors? You can run into all kinds of problems with IIS if you don't completely uninstall the old connectors before you install the new ones.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[aliciam29605858]

I can't say for certain what happened on the first time (the sysadmin did this), but definitely the last time we uninstalled all of the old connectors before installing the new one.

[Charlie Arehart]

Just beware: if you or anyone else in the past ran that CF wsconfig tool and failed to "run as admin", then some of the steps done when you "removed" the old connector may not have been done.

Or, since you propose to manually tweak things now, beware that you may have done such manual tweaking before. And if the wsconfig tool detects that the way things are configured in a way that it doesn't control, it may skip removing such manually tweaked things.

As Dave said, the key is to *completely* remove the IIS config for CF2016--that means removing any vestiges of it from the web;config (for each site) and from the applicationhost.config file for the entire server. If you are comfortable with editing those files, just remove any lines that refer to coldfusion2016 (or 11 or 10 and so on). But do beware: you must be very careful in editing those files or things may get hosed. Sure, you can take a backup first, but that will only get you back to where you started.

I will add that if you prefer to get help with doing this, even if only for the first server (and then you can repeat the process on your own on others), I am available to help, remotely via screenshare. For more, see the consulting  page at carehart.org. And I will note that there are still other consultants who provide such CF server troubleshooting, which I list at cf411.com/cftrouble.

Either way, I hope you will let readers know how it all works out.

[aliciam29605858]

Thanks for your reply.  We did end up manually removing all references to ColdFusion 2016 and manually adding the handler mappings that were missing.  Then we had a '500 0 193' error, so had to remove our setting of 'Enable 32-bit Applications' to false on our existing IIS site in the Application Pool advanced settings.  Our .cfm pages are now displaying without errors.  

Should there be a '.NET CLR Version' displayed?  I notice there is one for the new IIS site, but not the original site.

[Charlie Arehart]

Glad you solved it, and no, CF does not depend on that. 

[Dave Watts]

Just to let you know, the 32-bit thing is a pretty big deal. CF expects you to use 64-bit application pools by default. That may have caused your initial problems uninstalling and reinstalling connectors. I'm glad you were able to solve this manually. I've had to do that before, with servers that had a lot of IIS virtual servers on them. Note that you may have to repeat this process when new connector versions are released.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[aliciam29605858]

Thanks!  Good info to know for the future.