deletion of package files when performing an off-line update of CF 2023

[BILL314613570ssy]

Hi,

I administrate a few ColdFusion 2023 servers on windows. I perform an off-line update whenever a new update comes out. I carry out these following steps:

1) Download new hotfix and packages from Adobe Website

2) copy these files into the Bundles directory of ColdFusion

3) run the java -java hotfix_xxxx.jar

4) the installation states it was "successful" but everytime there are packages that were removed and not reinstalled. These new packages files were definitely included in the bundles directory, but they were deleted during the update process

5) My fix everytime is to re-copy these files back into the Bundles and install the packages manaually.

Do anyone know how i can perform the update, without needing to re-copy certain package files back into the Bundles to complete the process?

Thanks for any help you maybe able to provide! 🙂

[Charlie Arehart · Accepted solution]

Bill, you'll likely get a LOT of replies to this, as many people do experience similar problems--but not EVERYONE does (not even "everyone who does manual updates", nor even "everyone who downloads the zip" ). That suggests a seeming process problem (though maybe not).

So first, have you noticed that the update technote does NOT say to extract the zip into the [cf]/bundles folder...yet many do it. Instead, it says to extract it into a separate folder and point cf at that.

And it shows doing that by proposing you edit your neo_updates.xml file and its packagesurl element. FWIW, this same info is offered in the cf admin on the "package manager" page, in its "settings" tab at the top, which is easier to edit. 🙂  See the "packages site" section and it's "site url" value, which can be a file path. 

To that point, second, can you confirm for us what YOUR "packages site" (packagesurl) value is? Note that it can be a file path...and it need not even be a "file:///" url, though some suggest that. 

Finally, if you're in a position to try, I'd be interested to hear how things would go for you if you did these steps instead (extract the zip to another folder than bundles, then change the admin packagesurl to point to that, and then run the update.)

It may seem "no different in the end", but let's see if that's true for you or not. 🙂 

[BILL314613570ssy]

oh! you bring up a good point, i had updated all URLS in the neo_updates.xml to D:\ColdFusion2023\bundles\

but you are saying that i should do the following instead:

1) create a new directory  i.e. D:\ColdFusion\Staging\   

2) copy all the files to D:\ColdFusion\Staging\ 

3) update the neo_updates.xml files to D:\ColdFusion\Staging\ 

4) restart the service

5) from admin cmd. in the jre/bin directory   run java -jar D:\ColdFusion\Staging\updateinstallers\hotfix_xxxx.jar

6) be happy as that everything updated sucessfully!

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><settings><update autocheck="false" checkinterval="10" checkperiodically="false" sendupdate="true"><url>D:\ColdFusion2023\bundles\</url><defaulturl>D:\ColdFusion2023\bundles\</defaulturl><packagesurl>D:\ColdFusion2023\bundles\</packagesurl><defaultpackagesurl>D:\ColdFusion2023\bundles\</defaultpackagesurl><notification><emaillist/><fromemail/></notification></update><proxy><hostname/><port>0</port><username/><password/></proxy></settings>

[BILL314613570ssy]

Thanks! that worked perfectly!

[Charlie Arehart]

Well that's certainly great news that you're working again. As for helping others to "learn from this", we should discuss a bit more.

1) First, I would contend that the key change (for thie exercise) was your points 1 and 3, yes.

But then you show a neo_updates.xml file...which has the packagesurl still pointing to D:\ColdFusion2023\bundles\. Are you saying perhaps that was the version of the file BEFORE you made the change? And the "corrected" one had:

<packagesurl>D:\ColdFusion\Staging\bundlesdependency.json</packagesurl>

That's consistent with what the update technotes say to do (point to the bundlesdependency.json in the extracted folder). I just want to confirm what worked for you, again for the sake of future readers. 

Also, note that in the file you listed (which I assume was what did NOT work), that packagesurl JUST pointed to a folder.  That would have been its own problem...and indeed may have been the key problem for you originally. 🙂

One more thing: some people say (or find others saying) to change also the defaultpackagesurl element. That's not "necessary". That is the value which is populated in the CF admin packages settings page if one clicks the "restore default value". Usually that's set to the URL for the Adobe public site that returns a bundlesdependency.json file. Most should NOT change that--though I suppose if one is on a server where that URL will NEVER work, they COULD change to their \bundles\bundlesdependency.json file within your CF folder.

2) Second, some may feel that this extra step I had you do is "barely better than your original approach" of extracting into the [cf]\bundles folder. Again, I wanted first just to have you try things and see if it did or didn't work. Since it did, you may want to try it on another server (or next update). Just be sure to CHANGE that packagesurl to point to the \bundles\bundlesdependency.json in your CF folder. 🙂

Finally, folks doing the zip extraction should always watch out for the risk of extracting the zip in such a way that you end up with a bundles\bundles folder, which would be another gotcha!

3) At a minimum, please do clarify if you set your packages url value to look like I offer it, or was it something else?

Hope all this helps others in the future.