New to ColdFusion

[01blackerado]

Hello,

Im new to coldfusion and would like some help with troubleshooting. I just started at this company and they use cold fusion to do a few simple tasks. One of which is a script and windows scheduled task for birthdays. Coldfusion reads from a MS access db and sends out an email on based on the DOB of the person and their first name. For some reason it just stopped working sometime after November 1st 2011. I just need to know how to troubleshoot this, Im reading the log files that i know of thus far and they are not very informative.

Thanks

[12Robots]

This could be any number of things.

- Problem with the script

- Problem with the system clock

- Problem with the mail server

- Problem with spam filter

- etc

Can you offer any more information?  Do the log files show *anything*, even if you don't understand them?  Which log files are you looking at?  You should look at

<ColdFusion>/logs

and

<ColdFusion>/runtime/logs

Can you should us the code that stopped working?

jason

[01blackerado]

Well, I didn't get an error message. It just happen to be someones birthday today and i noticed we didnt get an email. I checked the last day an email had been received from "Birthday@domain.com" in my email account and that was Nov 1st. I then went on to the server that is hosting CF and checked the log files in CF\logs

application.log

scheduler.log

server.log

webserver.log

I dont have a "Runtime" subdirectory in my CF folder.

-Problem with script (Maybe, how can i tell or Reverse engineer this so that i can find out?)

-Problem with system clock ( I dont think this is the case, I have the correct time displayed in the system tray, and if i log on to the "default website" from a remote computer, the date is at least showing correctly on the webpage as 11/30/2011)

-Problem with mail server (I dont think so, we're receiving mail from all other sources. In fact CF is also set to send out an auto reminder every friday to all-employees@domain.com to fill out our timesheets and submit them. This email still has been delivered successfully each time)

-Problem with spam filter ( Same as above )

Ill be more than happy to share log information... please tell me which one would best serve for troubleshooting this and ill be happy to copy and paste.

Thank you

[Joshua_Cyr]

You should still confirm if the mail is generated, and just not leaving the

server.

In the cf install folder look for a mail/undelivr folder. It may be named

slightly different in some versions, I can't remember. Are there any

files there? Those are emails that can't be sent for some reason. Just

open them as a text file and take a look.

Is the scheduler log file showing any errors or failures. You can read

this via the CF admin or manually.

[01blackerado]

Ok I checked the <> /mail/undelivr folder and all it showed was a email that hadn't been sent from way back when it was first tested... sometime back in 08.

The scheduler log is interesting to say the least... heres the results I have from 11/25/2011 to Today.

"Information","980","11/25/11","08:00:06",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' completed."

"Information","1744","11/25/11","10:00:07",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1044","11/25/11","10:00:07",,"Error message for task: 'buildserverlist' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1744","11/25/11","10:00:07",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' completed."

"Information","1484","11/26/11","08:00:28",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/26/11","08:00:28",,"Error message for task: 'Birthday Script' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1484","11/26/11","08:00:28",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' completed."

"Information","1136","11/26/11","10:00:29",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/26/11","10:00:29",,"Error message for task: 'buildserverlist' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1136","11/26/11","10:00:29",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' completed."

"Information","1232","11/27/11","08:00:39",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/27/11","08:00:39",,"Error message for task: 'Birthday Script' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1232","11/27/11","08:00:39",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' completed."

"Information","1228","11/27/11","10:00:40",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/27/11","10:00:40",,"Error message for task: 'buildserverlist' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1228","11/27/11","10:00:40",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' completed."

"Information","1220","11/28/11","08:00:49",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/28/11","08:00:49",,"Error message for task: 'Birthday Script' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1220","11/28/11","08:00:49",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' completed."

"Information","1424","11/28/11","10:00:50",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/28/11","10:00:50",,"Error message for task: 'buildserverlist' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1424","11/28/11","10:00:50",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' completed."

"Information","452","11/29/11","08:00:59",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/29/11","08:00:59",,"Error message for task: 'Birthday Script' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","452","11/29/11","08:00:59",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' completed."

"Information","452","11/29/11","10:00:00",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/29/11","10:00:00",,"Error message for task: 'buildserverlist' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","452","11/29/11","10:00:00",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' completed."

"Information","164","11/30/11","08:00:09",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/30/11","08:00:09",,"Error message for task: 'Birthday Script' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","164","11/30/11","08:00:09",,"Scheduled task 'Birthday Script' for URL request 'http://server/employee/bday.cfm' completed."

"Information","1920","11/30/11","10:00:40",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' initiated."

"Error","1000","11/30/11","10:00:41",,"Error message for task: 'buildserverlist' is 'Connection Failure. Status code unavailable.'"

"Information","1920","11/30/11","10:00:41",,"Scheduled task 'buildserverlist' for URL request 'http://server/adtest/gather.cfm' completed."

You can see the error switches off from one to the other. I thought this was the issue but it has been doing this since well before I started here... this behavior seen here dates back to Late 2008, but has been working perfectly since.

Another thing I noticed is that when i run the schedule task from windows control panel, it seems to be in the "Running" state for a lot longer than need be to read a small access db that is all of 4KB large... is there a way that i can check and see if its maybe not pciking up the access db correctly or something?

[Joshua_Cyr]

If you manually run that page on the browser does it

complete successfully without error?

[01blackerado]

Yeah it seems so... Just to clarify, I went on the server, opened IIS, right clicked and browse the URL and it comes up no problem. Also checked the task scheduler (Windows) and i get result 0x0 which is successful. I can even copy and paste the command from out of the Task Scheduler, into the "run" command box, and it pulls up the Coldfusion bday.cfm

[iSaid]

Silly question - have there been any Birthdays since 1st Nov?  (not knowing how big your list/DB is) 

Have you checked the access database to see how many should have been sent out? 

Has any code within the file(s) been changed?

Also looking at the errors posted, you have a lot of "connection failures" - do you know what this is?

[Owainnorth]

Silly question - have there been any Birthdays since 1st Nov?

It was my birthday back in February and I certainly didn't get an email, I'll let you know how it goes next year.

What SMTP engine are you using? IIS? If so, do you have logging turned on there? That will show you very quickly whether an email was actually sent from the server or not, the CF mail logs can only show you whether or not it was successfully passed to the SMTP engine.

[01blackerado · Accepted solution]

Solved!! I had to repair the database in the OBDC. Thanks fellas