Hotfix Install Process Safety Questions

[Dordrecht]

I need to install a group of hotfixes very soon to CF2023 on Windows. CF is just installed as a standalone - not multiple instances. I prefer to do it using the GUI in the CF Admin. I really want to do everything possible to avoid issues, and the following questions are to that end. If anyone has some fast, high-level answers, I would appreciate hearing them.

1.  It is recommended in various places to back up the whole ColdFusion2023 folder before Hotfix install. Simple enough, but how/when to restore CF from that backup is not clear. How likely is it that after a significant error, replacing the whole ColdFusion2023 with the backed-up version will get things working again?
   
   
2.  It is recommended that CF be restarted before running the hotfix from the GUI, to both verify that the user has permissions to restart the services and to free up any resources held by the OS. Does this mean that ALL cf-related services including ODBC Agent, ODBC Server, .NET Service, Add-On Services should be restarted, or only the main Application Server service? Also, I have cf-related services that are listed in services, but that are not running. When restarting the services, should only the services originally running be restarted?
3. In regard to the Connector configuration, the Hotfix notes say connector configuration is not required, but adds, "However, upgrading from Update 4 and earlier requires you to recreate the connector", and then it points here, which includes pretty elaborate manual changes. When I applied hotfix 1 -16 in my development environment to a fresh install of CF2023 last week (no applied hotfixes), that was from "Update 4 and earlier", everythign worked fine, and yet I didn't need to do any connector updating. Are the connector configuration changes I linked to really necessary, or are they a fallback in case something doesn't work? I really don't see those steps as realistic in an update scenario, especially since they are not clear. For instance, in the third paragraph, it says, "In the following example, the port would be 8122". Where did the number 8122 come from?

Thanks in advance for any answers!

[BKBK · Accepted solution]

The situation is:

• You have one instance of ColdFusion 2023, installed on Windows.
• You wish to install the latest ColdFusion 2023 update, and prefer to do so by means of the Graphical User Interface in the ColdFusion Administrator.

1.  Yes, I would recommend that you back up the entire ColdFusion 2023 directory before applying the latest update.
   Proceed as follows:
   - Stop ColdFusion 2023.
   -  Copy the entire ColdFusion2023 directory -> ColdFusion2023_backup_before_Update17.
   -  Apply the update (currently Update 17).
   -  If, for any reason, ColdFusion 2023 fails to start or if there is a significant error you can't solve, restore the backup directory as "ColdFusion2023" and start ColdFusion.
   
   
2.   Yes, it is recommended to restart ColdFusion just before applying an update. From my experience with applying updates through the Administrator, it has never been necessary to also restart any of the other services (ODBC Agent, ODBC Server, .NET Service, Add-On Services). It has always been sufficient to restart just the ColdFusion Application Server. However, you should expect to restart any of the related services, should an issue occur in its communication with the Application server.  
   
   
3.   As your installation is currently Update 16, when you apply Update 17 connector recreation is not required. But there is one caveat.
   Let us suppose the unlikely scenario that the update breaks the server, and you have to restore the ColdFusion2023 directory. Then. on rare occasions, web server connector binaries may need re-running.
   
   I think the "8122" mentioned in the documentation is a typographical error. The port in the connector example is clearly 8022.

[Dordrecht]

Thank you for the response, @BKBK. It was helpful during the upgrade.

Regarding #3, you said, "As your installation is currently Update 16...". That was not the case. The scenario I presented was installing update 16 (or 1-16 if you want to think of it that way) to a fresh install of ColdFusion 2023 that had no previous updates applied. In both my dev testing and my prod deployment, my site worked fine after the update, without having to do anything with a connector, which (to my understanding, atleast) contradicts Adobe's statement, "However, upgrading from Update 4 and earlier requires you to recreate the connector."

Furthermore, I find some websites mentioning that the connector can be reconfigured using wsconfig.exe, but the documentation referenced in Adobe's various hotfix documentation makes reference only to a drawn-out, manual method with no reference to wsconfig.exe. In my years working with CF, Adobe documentation that I have seen regarding the connector is lacking - exactly what it does, where it does it, how things are changed, when they need to be changed, etc. - which is a real issue.

[BKBK]

Thanks for the clarification, @Dordrecht . What you say makes sense. Adobe's wording is indeed confusing. 

What they mean is:“If your connector was created using Update 4 or earlier, and if you are now running Update 5 or newer, then recreate it.” They are referring to connector creation time, not update installation time. Unfortunately, that nuance isn’t stated explicitly.

I shall assume we're talking about external web servers (like IIS and Apache). The connector story does not apply to the built-in Tomcat web server. Then I think it all depends on the moment when you downloaded the fresh install. There is a possibility that the version (Update level) of your installer already deployed a compatible connector during installation. 

Fresh installs usually have an update level. For example, when I did a fresh install of ColdFusion 2023 last March, it was at Update 5 level. You will notice that the most recent installer at https://www.cfmlrepo.com/ is also Update 5. Could it be that your fresh install was also Update 5? There's one way to find out.

Open the installation log (located by default in C:|ColdFusion2023 ) in a text editor. Search for the string 2023.0.**, where * is a wildcard representing any digit. The highest and most frequent of these digits usually is the Update level. For example, in my ColdFusion 2021 installation log there are many occurrences of 2021.0.02 (Update 2); in my ColdFusion 2023 installation log there are many occurrences of 2023.0.05 (Update 5).

That said, I agree with you that Adobe needs to improve the documentation on connectors and on the Web Server Configuration Tool, wsconfig.exe. In fact, I would suggest you use the last paragraph of your last post as the basis for a Feature Request.
        

[Dordrecht]

Thank you, @BKBK . When I view the install file, I see the first reference as 2023.0.0.2, but references after that are to 2023.0.0.330468. 

I'm not sure if  "the connector" primarily involves changes to CF configs or IIS's configs. If the latter, possibly "the connector" was updated along with a previously installed hotfix to CF2021, because I installed CF2023 side-by-side with CF2021 on the servers. Otherwise, why I didn't need to recreate tghe connector is still a mystery to me.