My Experience with Lion and CF9

Report · Jul 20, 2011

I'm going to share my experience with you so you can either try to get a little farther than I did, or wait until Adobe supports Lion officially (Recommended).

There were three basic hurdles to get CF server to run on Lion and all but one of them becomes a show stopper.

1. The first thing you'll trip over are the permission changes in apache, even if you had web sharing turned on, your sites directory and of your localhosts will be screwed.

To overcome that bit you'll need to add a block to user.conf like so:

Directory "your/path/is/different/than/mine"

Options Indexes MultiViews

AllowOverride None

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

/Directory

At this point, you should be able to get to localhost and bring up your default site as long as it is not using CF.

2. One thing you have to understand about Lion is the big change in permissions. A number of directories that used to allow admin to read and write no longer allow this. For our purposes we're mostly concerned with /Library/WebServer/Documents/ - I installed the developer edition of the enterprise version of CF 9.01, and this (I believe) was the default location where the admin was installed. Post Lion migration, your user (admin) account will no longer be able to write to this location and CF will choke. There are two choices at this point, you can muck around with permissions or you can uninstall JRun4/CF and install the admin in another writeable location. I elected to reinstall in my case just to try to adhere to the new rules imposed by Lion. The root user could in fact continue to do anything in this location, but my normal user is simply an admin.

The install works fine writing to the Application directory, the only bit you have to change is where your administrator will be. Again, it defaults to /Library/WebServer/Documents/, and that's what you have to change. I chose a location I created under my user directory. I found that it was best to write a new alias in my httpd.conf file and to test and restart apache after the CF uninstall.

3. The final hurdle was this: Once you clear the installation hurdle, you can bring up the admin, add data sources, and so on, but what you can't do is get to the System Information screen. In my case it just hung forever.

I was able to bring up all my local development sites, but there were various quirks, cfscript that worked perfectly before would break, some pages were fast as ever, others were dog slow. Since I downloaded the installer fresh today I presume I was on the latest, but maybe not. The bottom line is this: After I installed Lion and opened up CF Builder for the first time (Eclipse) the OS knew I needed a java runtime and installed it for me. I couldn't descern if this was the same one CF was using or not, but one of two conditions exist. Either CF is using it, in which case CF is choking internally on the one provided by Apple, or it's using one packaged with JRun, which must be incompatiable with something in Lion.

I could not resolve the issues I had running various local sites. Where everything worked without a hitch before Lion, the system was intermitently slow, or would just hang, and the most vexing indication of that was simple trying to bring up the System Information page with CF Admin itself.

So that is my sad tale, I couldn't live with the hanging and slowness and decided to restore my system to its pre lion install state so I can keep working efficiently. My hope is that better minds than mine at Adobe will be able to update CF so it runs well on Lion, or maybe someone will read this and push the ball down the field a little more.

Best,

-john

Report · Jul 25, 2011

Seems many people (including me) are having the same issue. http://www.trunkful.com/index.cfm/2011/7/20/ColdFusion-9-on-OS-X-Lion. While your work around worked for me on a single server install, the multi-server install still bombs out on 9.0.1.

Report · Jul 25, 2011

None of this would bother me if I could find one adobe employee, evanglist, anyone, who wrote about CF development on Mac OS. Apple's had a pre-release version of Lion out there for months and Adobe appears to have done nothing. It's all about the flash war isn't it fellas? The last bit posted on Forta's blog is on Flash based andriod development for crying out loud. Almost a week later what can anyone find on this issue.? The answer is silence. It's pathetic.

Report · Jul 26, 2011

I don't think it's pathetic and I don't think it has anything to do with Flash, it's just that running an OSX server for ColdFusion is not exactly commonplace. As a company, we're currently running nearly 1700 servers, and not a single customer has, or has ever shown an interest in, running OSX.

ColdFusion is a webserver technology, and webservers generally run Linux or they run Windows. If Apple are going to stop supporting Java, why should Adobe pour money into trying to make ColdFusion work on a platform that basically none of their customers use?

Out of interest, why are you running CF on an OSX box anyway?

Report · Jul 26, 2011

I dont think it has anything to do with Flash or Apple etc.

We typically support new OS releases in next (major or minor) version and CF10 plans to support OSX Lion. It is same with other OSes, DBs etc. Out of turn support or via a hotfix is a difficult process to support OSes where installer/connector and other changes might be required and is a resource intensive issue. This is further complicated by the fact that CF system requirements is a very complex matrix

We are watching this issue and if there is a very strong business case, we will be open to consider how best this particular situation can be solved.

Hemant

CF Team, Adobe

Report · Jul 26, 2011

Hemant,

As I said, this wouldn't bother me if I could find anyone talking about coldfusion and what the company plans to do. My problem with your reply is that of course there is a business case, is it your position that the company actually needs to determine if it needs to continue to support OSX? Really? Any plans to keep supporting windows as an operating system as it evolves? This is about bad communication and there is a history of it with coldfusion. You've gladly taken money from companies that run on unix, you know that we're out here and there are thousands of us running OSX. It's not a matter of being johnny-on-spot when and os change occurs, though that would be nice. It's about communication so your development community can make plans. Claiming you need to study the issue is completely disingenuous, any product manager worth their pay would be out infront of this issue and communicating before this turns into another fiasco.

-john

Report · Jul 26, 2011

Is this the official Adobe position on this issue? If it is, I've got to tell you that it is the sorriest example of customer service/support to which I've ever been witness. As has been pointed out in numerous other posts across the web, OS X Lion previews have been available for months. Adobe's statements and "attitude" with respect to ALL their products as it relates to Lion compatibility suggest that they saw Lion for the very first time on July 21. I'm actually baffled by it. And rather than offer some sort of insite into the nature of the compatibility problems and their potential solutions and timeframes for fixes, we get knee jerk reacations that blame Apple for disabling hardware acceleration (later retracted by Adobe) and statements to the affect that "if we feel it is a worthy OS feature, we'll think about supporting it". Really? Gee.....I hope we, your customers, aren't putting you out too much. I would hope that the growing presence of OS X in the enterprise and among independent software developers would be all the "business case" you need for keeping your Mac users happy. I think you may be heading in the opposite direction. Your move a couple of weeks ago to capture disgruntled Final Cut Pro users.....brilliant. This....not so much.

M. McConnell

Report · Jul 26, 2011

From what I understand take x number of products, multiply it by x number of

OS varieties (xp, vista, win7, OS X, etc) multiply that by the number of

languages supported and thus must be tested before release, then multiply

that by the number of third party apps that are integrated, which Adobe

doesn't support but instead licenses and which may or may not have been

updated to work with Lion. It is a very big number. That is the number of

testable variations. Basically a lot. Now take a bunch of tech changes in

Lion which require rewrites (Rosetta removal, Java removal, etc). The fact

that they got it down to 14 known issues by launch of Lion is pretty good.

Of course everyone would love and hope it to be zero, and maybe there is a

good reason it should have been. Just saying it isn't crazy that there are

still some issues to sort out. I suspect they wont release updates until

they are certified working so as not to cause more harm then good, introduce

new security holes, etc.

For CF, ya I would have thought there would be a walk through for it. I

would have also thought it would have been ready before Lion launched. I did

a quick google search and found a few people who have it working so surely

there is some way to make it happen. Sounds like it is just updating java.

I don't use OS X so haven't looked further.

http://barthle.com/blog/index.cfm/2011/7/20/CF9-on-OS-X-Lion-anyone

http://www.trunkful.com/index.cfm/2011/7/20/ColdFusion-9-on-OS-X-Lion

http://www.sargas.com/2011/07/coldfusion-spinning-after-upgrading-to-lion-osx-10-7/

As for if / when CF 9 installers will be working on Lion... well not sure. I

am not on the team and have no insight. I would say that I would have

thought it crazy that an upgrade on day one would make sense for anyone who

had to do this line of work. Especially now that java has been dropped from

the OS, which is the core of CF. Then again not everyone really followed

that news, and it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of the new

shiny fun thing.

Some other incompatible apps: http://roaringapps.com/apps:table#html-body

Best of luck to you all. Hopefully those blog posts help.

Joshua

Report · Jul 28, 2011

Mike:

Not that I agree with Adobe's priorities ... but at least they are consistant. I don't remember them ever supporting a new OS as soon as it was released with CF. At least not right away. I am including Linux and Windows is that. This is a bit different since Lion is so very inexpensive and will likely be widely adopted rapidly, but again they do have other priorities. And developer copies (FREE) come behind server installs ($$$). And since OS X is not widely adopted on server installs, it is not priority #1. And let's not forget the next version they are already working on. So they may make the strategic decision to not fully support this new OS until CF10 (but still give enthusiasts the ability to run a few patches to get it working).

Now I agree, as far as communication ... Adobe has not been out in front of this issue. But, then again - they never said OS X Lion was supported - so us earlier adopters knew we were proceeding at our own risk.

Report · Jul 28, 2011

No argument with that.....I just expect more, as do most consumers these days. If companies are unable to keep up and/or meet their customer's expectations (even if they appear on the surface to be unreasonable), those customers have choices. I have responsibilities to those to whom I provide solutions using Adobe tools. After the way this was handled, let's just say that I'm now diversifying my development portfolio (which is probably the responsible thing to do in any event).

And for the record, I have not yet taken the Lion plunge on any of my prod machines....I just resent the fact that I cannot do so without significant issues.

M. McConnell

Report · Aug 01, 2011

Thanks for your feedback. I was trying to explain how we have worked on new platform and DB support in past. That doesn't mean that our strategy for future can't change depending on the impact it has for our cusotmers. We are currently investigating issues with Lion support.

Thanks,

Hemant

Report · Jul 26, 2011

While you are right (Owain) that OSX server is not commonplace, what is seen is developers running ColdFusion on their local development environments using the OS X platform. Anecdotally, anyone who has ever been to a CF conference will have seen a lot of presenters, audiences members, and even Adobe employees running around with CF on their MacBook Pro laptops. As a developer who relies on CF working with OS X, I would like to see Adobe get out in front of the issue. Whether you agree or not about Adobe supporting OS X, they have made a conscious decision to support the OS X platform. In doing so, they are obligated to that customer base. I will say, that they do not typically wait for major versions of CF to support the next version of OS X (or Windows), but I am not sure they have ever supported an OS within the same month of its release. But since the adoption rate for previous OS X users to upgrade to Lion will be much higher do to the low cost, I would hope they re-evaluate that decision.

Report · Jul 26, 2011

Our developers prefer to run on OSX because it's more stable than windows, it doesn't get bogged down in the virus merry-go-round, and (this is the nut) allows us to more easily maintain a number of vms that allow us to test our web and desktop applications using a number of different browsers on a number of different os's. So while our webservers do in fact run under unix, developers are still compelled to test using browsers on different client os's. And the primary reason they run a developer version on OSX is because they're developing locally on their own machines, and doing their unit testing locally before promoting code up to our centralize qa server. Have you never heard of the developer edition of coldfusion? This is why it exists. . .

Report · Jul 26, 2011

Kevin - I completely agree with you - I've known many people use OSX on desktops and for presentations, in fact I'd probably go back to using it myself if the nature of my job permitted. John - I agree with the stability issues and by no means am I questioning why people would choose OSX for a desktop environment. I completely understand why that would have limited you to the OSX version of CF a few years ago, but I really don't see the need any more.

Virtualisation being what it is, you can get yourself a medium-spec PC or server, install VMware ESXi on it for free and set yourself up a multi-server web/database server staging environment that won't cost you a penny to run. I've been bitten too many times by developing CF on Windows then deploying to Linux (or vice versa); I believe it's a false economy and really don't see any need to do so these days. I even run this setup in my home; one physical machine hosts a Windows 2008 web server running ColdFusion Developer, a SQL2008 box, a Linux webserver and Linux Oracle box. And it doesn't cost me a penny, except for the negligible power draw.

How can several developers work on code if it's on your desktop PC? What about version control and backup centralisation?

I know it's "how people are used to working" sometimes, but I believe the idea of having to run software on the OS your desktop is running is an antiquated one, and in the majority of cases is completely unnecessary, and often wasteful.

O.

Report · Jul 26, 2011

Owain,

Simply envision a virtual development shop with individual developers working remotely, along with centralized dev and qa environments. Code is developed locally using the developer edition of the application server where it can be developed and unit tested according to the developer's needs. That's complete automous from the source control maintained centrally. Only when code is mature enough does it get promoted to a qa environment where it is checked into source control and made available for integration testing. And it's not a matter of running on a os our desktop is on. Our servers run on unix so OSX makes sense for us. It sounds like we might be the opposite of you. Our vm's are typically windows machines that still talk to our local unix webserver so we can test various browsers on Windows.

-john

Report · Jul 26, 2011

John, don't get me wrong - I've always been a strong supporter of "if it works for you, then it's a good solution".

I just always question these days when someone implies they're using something simply becuase it's what their desktop runs - it's not a great idea. Even the differences between Linux and OSX are significant despite it's BSD roots.

If it works for you

Report · Jul 26, 2011

Right, perhaps if your servers ran on unix then you'd understand better why developers would want to run their local development server on OSX rather than run windows and use vm's to run their development server on unix. The bottom line is you're tied to windows and we're not.

Report · Jul 26, 2011

perhaps if your servers ran on unix then you'd understand better why developers would want to run their local development server on OSX

We run several linux CF boxes I have to write code for, but that does not make me feel inclined in any way to use OSX for my development, as tOSX and CentOS very different beasts.

The bottom line is you're tied to windows and we're not.

Absolutely not - I use Windows because it's has the widest variety of tools available for it for the tasks I need to do for my job. It's therefore a preference rather than a necessity.

Report · Jul 26, 2011

If it works for you 😉

Report · Aug 12, 2011

Sorry to hear everyone so down on OSX. We've got 8 mac mini servers at our datacenter that actually run circles around their windows counterparts. OSX has historically been our server platform of choice. Reading this I fear we may need to begin to start identifying alternatives to Adobe CF.

I actually took it for granted that CF would be fine on lion and already have another OSX server on the way. I suppose I need to check railo and other alternatives at this point. Bummer.

Report · Aug 13, 2011

Folks, most of this issues are with multi-instance, not the single instance - that works fine. Plus, in my humble opinion - the issues are mostly with Apple's typical behavoir of making large changes that effect third party vendors like Adobe in their major OS releases. Adobe will provide support for these other instances of OS X Lion in time, but if you expect other "alternatives" to provide release day support for every new OS release, then I would just say "good luck with that." Every developer using OS X Lion should be able to get CF up and running using the single instance server. And any server provider who would upgrade to a new OS version out of the gate would probably scare me. I mean, our Windows system admins would not roll our production servers on the latest Windows server versions without a few months shaking out first and perhaps not until the first service pack.

Is it frustrating that CF doesn't work in every instance on the new OS X Lion? Sure. Am I going to dump Adobe because they had other priorities that probably should come first? Not likely.