New Install of Coldfusion 2016 Startup Issue XPathFactory

Report · May 10, 2018

Hello all

I have installed Coldfusion 2016 on Ubuntu and I am seeing this in the logs:

Error [localhost-startStop-1] - XPathFactory#newInstance() failed to create an XPathFactory for the default object model:

http://java.sun.com/jaxp/xpath/dom with the XPathFactoryConfigurationException:

javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactoryConfigurationException: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory:

jar:file:/opt/coldfusion2016/cfusion/bin/../lib/saxon9he.jar!/META-INF/services/javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory:2: Illegal configuration-file syntax

Anyone see this?

Also, maybe related, but I also cannot update (CF Update 6) the server using the CF Admin: seeing this in the logs:

[cfthread-1] - Installing update, Update-File: /opt/coldfusion2016/cfusion/hf-updates/hotfix-006-308055.jar Update-Level: 06

[cfthread-1] - Install Error - ======================================================= Installer User Interface Mode Not Supported Unable to load and to prepare the installer in console or silent mode. =======================================================

any help would be very appreciated

thanks in advanced

Report · May 10, 2018

Hi,

Could you please let me know if you are getting this after you installed the ColdFusion or while installing it. please share the install log here.

Thanks,

Priyank Shrivastava

Thanks,
Priyank Shrivastava

Report · May 10, 2018

This is happening after installation. The site that is hosted on this CF2016 (standard) works (mostly) fine by the way. Do you want the entire install log? it pretty big - i quickly looked thru it - it all says "SUCCESSFUL"

Report · May 11, 2018

Hi,

So the site is working fine when you configured the connector with Apache, but you are seeing this issue with update installation?

Thanks,

Priyank

Thanks,
Priyank Shrivastava

Report · May 11, 2018

Yes, working fine (mostly) - I am having some issues with datetime fields, some cfproxy code and some css - strangely enough, but I haven't gotten into that yet. I noticed this issue when I tried to us CF admin to update the server to CF update 6. I saw the "Interface Mode Not Supported Unable to load and to prepare the installer in console or silent mode. " error at that time. I saw the "XPathFactory" error when I restarted CF. I mentioned it in my original post, in case the XPathFactory and the CF update failure error were related.

Report · May 11, 2018

Artiem, when you say the log all says successful, let's be more specific (for your sake, and Adobe's, and those of us following along).

To be clear, you are referring to the installation log that's in the root of the CF2016 folder, right?

And when you say it all says "successful", can you be more specific. Do you see a line (near the top of the file, about 100 lines down), looking like this:

Summary

-------

Installation: Successful.

9111 Successes

0 Warnings

0 NonFatalErrors

0 FatalErrors

Your number of successes may vary, but you could have 9110 in my case, and 1 error, and that could keep some things from working.

Finally, you mention having tried to run an update, and that failed. Was that in the UI, or were you looking at a log about the update, in the cfusion/hf-updates folder? There would normally be a folder there for each update one tried to install (6, in your case), and a log file in that for each time you tried to add or remove an update. Did you get such a log? (It's possible there may be no folder there for your update 6, if the update never really started.)

If there is a log there, note that it TOO has that table of successes and errors, and you'd want to see that it was all successes. I discuss this more in a blog post on the topic:

How to solve common problems with applying ColdFusion updates (in 10 and above)

Finally, either way, do you see any folder for any other updates (5 or earlier)? I know you said you just installed it and tried this one update. I'm just wanting to be 100% clear that there is no other update. The reason I ask is that if somehow some previous update WAS done (by you or anyone involved in the CF instance), perhaps a failure in THAT update has left things in the state that you can't do the NEXT update. Just something to consider.

Hope something there is helpful.

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart.org)

Report · May 11, 2018

Thanks for your reply - let me try to explain the whole story and answer your questions.

1. For starters here is the "top" of the install log:

Tue May 08 02:16:29 EDT 2018

Free Memory: 120535 kB

Total Memory: 438784 kB

2 Command Line Args:

0: -m

1: CONSOLE

java.class.path:

/tmp/install.dir.5086/InstallerData

/tmp/install.dir.5086/InstallerData/installer.zip

ZGUtil.CLASS_PATH:

/tmp/install.dir.5086/InstallerData

/tmp/install.dir.5086/InstallerData/installer.zip

sun.boot.class.path:

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/resources.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/rt.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/sunrsasign.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/jsse.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/jce.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/charsets.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/jfr.jar

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/classes

java.ext.dirs:

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre/lib/ext

/usr/java/packages/lib/ext

java.version == 1.8.0_112 (Java 1)

java.vm.name == Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM

java.vm.vendor == Oracle Corporation

java.vm.version == 25.112-b15

java.vm.specification.name == Java Virtual Machine Specification

java.vm.specification.vendor == Oracle Corporation

java.vm.specification.version == 1.8

java.specification.name == Java Platform API Specification

java.specification.vendor == Oracle Corporation

java.specification.version == 1.8

java.vendor == Oracle Corporation

java.vendor.url == http://java.oracle.com/

java.class.version == 52.0

java.library.path == /usr/java/packages/lib/amd64:/usr/lib64:/lib64:/lib:/usr/lib

java.compiler == null

java.home == /tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre

java.io.tmpdir == /tmp

os.name == Linux

os.arch == amd64

os.version == 4.4.0-122-generic

path.separator == :

file.separator == /

file.encoding == UTF-8

user.name == root

user.home == /root

user.dir == /tmp/install.dir.5086

user.language == en

user.region == null

__________________________________________________________________________

Installed Feature(s) ColdFusion of Adobe ColdFusion 2016

Install Begin: MAY 8, 2018 2:07:22 PM EDT

Install End: MAY 8, 2018 2:16:17 PM EDT

Installed by InstallAnywhere 17.0 Premier Build 5158

User Interactions

-----------------

#Choose Install Folder

#---------------------

USER_INSTALL_DIR=/opt/coldfusion2016

#Runtime User

#------------

RUNTIME_USER=

#Configure ColdFusion with OpenOffice

#------------------------------------

CONFIGURE_OPENOFFICE_RESULT=\"\",\"Skip\"

#Server Updates

#--------------

AUTO_ENABLE_UPDATES_UI=\"Y\"

#Install

#-------

-fileOverwrite_/opt/coldfusion2016/uninstall/uninstall.lax=Yes

-fileOverwrite_/opt/coldfusion2016/coldfusion=Yes

-fileOverwrite_/opt/coldfusion2016/parseargs=Yes

-fileOverwrite_/opt/coldfusion2016/wsconfig=Yes

-fileOverwrite_/opt/coldfusion2016/license.html=Yes

-fileOverwrite_/opt/coldfusion2016/Readme.htm=Yes

Summary

-------

Installation: Successful null

8667 Successes

1 Warnings

0 NonFatalErrors

0 FatalErrors

Action Notes:

Pre-Installation Check: The installer was unable to determine if libstdc++.so is available.

The library is necessary for C++ custom tags, webservices and some cfimage functionality to work properly.

This box happened to already had lib C++ 6 - since I don't use or plan to use cfimage or webservices, and since the installer completed, I ignored that error and moved on.

2. I then loaded my app - which is an older (2011) CF app - (that happens to be huge) - and was built on CF9.01. With MySQL and apache configured the site came up. I had a few css issues - which i found to be weird, but i adjusted that and began testing. For the most part, this old site works - but I noticed that the datetime field wasn't working, neither was any bound cfselect statements (both of which are heavily used) - i started researching how to fix that. This led me to start the upgrade process, as out of the box, it only had CF Update 3.

3. First attempt - update CF via CF admin (update 6 was listed) - I clicked download and that worked fine. I clicked install and it just sat there. i started looking at the log /opt/coldfusion2016/cfusion/log/coldfusion-out.log and noticed the last entry was:

May 11, 2018 11:16:51 AM Information [cfthread-2] - Install Error - ======================================================= Installer User Interface Mode Not Supported Unable to load and to prepare the installer in console or silent mode. =======================================================

At this point I decide to restart CF. in tailing the log I noticed this during startup:

Error [localhost-startStop-1] - XPathFactory#newInstance() failed to create an XPathFactory for the default object model:

http://java.sun.com/jaxp/xpath/dom with the XPathFactoryConfigurationException:

javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactoryConfigurationException: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory:

jar:file:/opt/coldfusion2016/cfusion/bin/../lib/saxon9he.jar!/META-INF/services/javax.xml. xpath.XPathFactory:2: Illegal configuration-file syntax

4. So at this point I think i have 2 issues. And sort of guessing, i thought maybe these 2 issues are related, so i spent several hours trying to fix the XPathFactory error during startup.

5. Found a post online saying upgrade to Java 1_8_172 - so I did that - site still ok. errors still exist,

6. Looking at hf-update folder: Below is a list of what is in that folder. I thought perhaps that I needed to update 4 then 5 then 6, so I downloaded and attempted each of these. I got the same error for all 3 updates

hf-2016-0004-302561.properties

hf-2016-0005-303689.properties

hf-2016-0006-308055.properties

hotfix-004-302561.jar

hotfix-005-303689.jar

hotfix-006-308055.jar

updates.xml*

7. Try a CLI update: i also tried this:

/opt/coldfusion2016/jdk1.8.0_172/bin/java -jar /opt/coldfusion2016/cfusion/hf-updates/hotfix-004-302561.jar

Same error.

8. Things I am not sure of: Unfortunately, I do not know if the XFactory error happened before I attempted any updates, We have an immediate need to move to a new server farm and get off CF9 as quickly as possible so once the site came up, i began testing it and then the issues started as I have described,

I hope that this information helps!

thanks in advance

Report · May 11, 2018

Artiem, I still would wonder if you are having errors with the update process, since things (with the xpath error) started happening after you tried update 6 the first time. (And to be clear, you did not need to do 4 and 5. CF updates are cumulative. It does say that but it seems it’s easily missed.)

You also say that you tried applying the 4 and 5 and got “the same error”, and also after doing the CLI approach. But which is the “same error”? Do you mean that during the startup of CF, as reflected in the coldfusion-out.log you are tailing?

Finally, you have not told us whether you looked at the install log for the updates, as I suggested. I’m curious about the case of your install of update 6 (your point 2), or of 4 and 5 (your point 6) or your CLI attempt (your point 7). The answer may be there.

Indeed, did you check out the blog post I shared, which elaborates on all this? It may simply be that you are having the very sort of error I outline there, from your first attempt at update 6 to the later ones of 4 and 5, and the CLI one. And I outline there a few possible explanations and solutions.

And one in fact is to do the CLI installer. In that you tried that, had you made sure that CF and related CF services were stopped? Do check all your Linux services to see which may be related to CF, like the “coldfusion 2016 add-on service”. One of the common problems I identify in the blog post is that if the installer (UI or CLI) does not stop the CF instances, then when it tries to update files they may be locked. The install log would show that, but it can be a needle in a haystack.

Again, the first thing to look at is the install log for the update (shown only after the update completes or fails), and to look for that same table of successes and errors as exists in the CF install log. If you see it has any errors at all, that’s your problem, and you have to solve that.

If that’s the situation, and yet you may still struggle after reading my blog post (or perhaps if you feel you don’t care to wade through it), I will say that I am available to help you with this on a consulting basis, working entirely remotely (without you needing to give me remote access to your server, but instead working via a shared desktop solution). I also have no minimum, and I have a satisfaction guarantee so you won’t pay for time you don’t find valuable. For more, see http://www.carehart.org/consulting.

Sorry for the seeming sales pitch there, but if you’re in need and don’t want to wait for back and forths with folks here, I’m just saying that’s an option. I have helped hundreds of shops resolve CF update problems, and the blog post shares the lessons learned.

/charlie

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart.org)

Report · May 11, 2018

Charlie

when I say "same error" i mean this error:

May 11, 2018 11:16:51 AM Information [cfthread-2] - Install Error - ======================================================= Installer User Interface Mode Not Supported Unable to load and to prepare the installer in console or silent mode. =======================================================

I have tried update 4, 5 and 6 both in the CLI and CF Admin. in all cases I receive the above error in the coldfusion-out.log

yes, I have checked out that blog post. I had already tried upgrading all 3 updates (4,5,6) in both methods (CLI,Admin) with both CF services started and not running. used ps aux and saw no CF services running (as far as I know) - i also shutdown mysql. all led to the same error (above)

I will go through your blog post more carefully as well

thanks

Report · May 11, 2018

OK, but the one thing you have not replied to (from my note, let alone from the blog post) is: are there all successes and 0 errors in the latest (and earlier) update logs? That seems where you want to start.

/charlie

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart.org)

Report · May 14, 2018

Charie

I had included the top portion on the install log in my point #1 on that big post but here it is again:

Installation: Successful null

8667 Successes

1 Warnings

0 NonFatalErrors

0 FatalErrors

Action Notes:

Pre-Installation Check: The installer was unable to determine if libstdc++.so is available.

The library is necessary for C++ custom tags, webservices and some cfimage functionality to work properly.

This box happened to already had lib C++ 6 - since I don't use or plan to use cfimage or webservices, and since the installer completed, I ignored that error and moved on.

please let me know

Report · May 16, 2018

We are talking past each other. I don't think I have misunderstood you.

Again, are you quoting from CF's *installation log*, which is in the root of the CF folder? I have been asking instead (well, additionally), about the *update* log, which is in another folder. I will repeat the two key points of what I said in my first reply above:

[snip]
Artiem, when you say the log all says successful, let's be more specific (for your sake, and Adobe's, and those of us following along).
To be clear, you are referring to the installation log that's in the root of the CF2016 folder, right?

[snip]

Finally, you mention having tried to run an update, and that failed. Was that in the UI, or were you looking at a log about the update, in the cfusion/hf-updates folder? There would normally be a folder there for each update one tried to install (6, in your case), and a log file in that for each time you tried to add or remove an update. Did you get such a log? (It's possible there may be no folder there for your update 6, if the update never really started.)

/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart.org)

Report · May 17, 2018

I apologize, I thought I had already mentioned that there is no log that I can find as it relates to the updates. There are no log files or folders in the /cfusion/hf-updates folder. there are only 2 files there - the downloaded.jar file and a .properties file.

thanks

Report · May 20, 2018

Hi artiem51422106

There seems to be some confusion about the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version that ColdFusion is using. I see

/tmp/install.dir.5086/Linux/resource/jre,

/opt/coldfusion2016/jdk1.8.0_172/jre

and

/opt/coldfusion2016/jre

Which one is it? In other words, what is the value of the java.home property in the jvm.config file?

What I would do is:

1) uninstall the current ColdFusion 2016 installation, deleting all the files;

2) re-install ColdFusion 2016;

3) apply the updates, using the default JRE, that is, the one that comes bundled with ColdFusion 2016;

If you wish ColdFusion 2016 to use a separately installed JDK instead then, afterwards,

4) modify the value of the java.home property in the jvm.config file to the absolute path of the JRE folder in the JDK installation;

5) restart ColdFusion 2016 for the new settings to take effect.