NOW LIVE! Adobe ColdFusion 2023 and 2021 August 2024 general updates

[Saurav_Ghosh]

Update (8/28/2024): Added a known issue about a few packages getting uninstalled after installing the update. View the tech note for more information.

Update (8/21/2024): CFFiddle is updated with ColdFusion (2023 release) Update 9 and ColdFusion (2021 release) Update 15.

We are pleased to announce that we have released general updates to ColdFusion (2023 release) Update 9 and ColdFusion (2021 release) Update 15.

We’ve upgraded Tomcat from version 9.0.85 to version 9.0.93 for both versions.

Where do I download the updates from

Download the updates from the following locations:

• ColdFusion (2023 release) Updates
• ColdFusion (2021 release) Updates

For more information, view the following tech notes:

• ColdFusion (2023 release) Update 9
• ColdFusion (2021 release) Update 15

Are the Docker images available

The images are available on the Docker hub and ECR.

Please update your ColdFusion versions and provide your valuable feedback.

[Charlie Arehart]

Thanks for that, Saurav. So by my read of the two technotes, the ONLY change is the update to the current latest Tomcat, is that right? No other changes?

BTW, I don't mean by that to denigrate the update. Some will know that there were vulns addressed by intervening tomcat updates (.86 and .90). Indeed I'll do a blog post today with far more detail to help people appreciate such tomcat version updates as they underlie typical cf deployments. I'll offer a link here when that's done.

But I wanted to confirm first if indeed this tomcat update is the only thing new at least for those going from the immediately prior cf updates (cf2023 update 8 and cf2021 update 13).

Then again, for anyone jumping to this from earlier cf updates, there are certainly very important (potentially breaking) changes to beware, as would be brought in the two most recent previous CF updates, from March and June. Those were discussed in forum threads here the day they came out (in March and June), as well as more in blog posts of my own (also the day the updates came out) in March and June. And then in early August I did related posts with still more that interested folks should be aware about the March  update and about the June update.

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

@Charlie Arehart  This only contains the Tomcat upgrade and nothing else is added to this update. 

[Charlie Arehart]

Thanks very much for that clarification, Priyank.

[Priyank Shrivastava.]

Docker Images are available to use now. 

[Tim2842955474bi]

Regarding the new posting about packages getting uninstalled... thanks for verifying, we had that happen. Only deployed to QA so far but it did uninstall those. This isn't the first time a CF Update has uninstalled packages... we have about a 50/50 chance of administrator getting uninstalled frequently. I'm hoping Adobe can work on making updates less volatile. 

In the meantime I'm working on adding CFPM scripting to our deployment scripts so it reinstalls any missing from our list of required packages after each update. 

[Charlie Arehart]

Tim, if it helps to hear, it's only happening with CF2021 update 15 (not any earlier ones, nor with CF2023 update 9 released the same day).

As for the root cause problem, I think I have found it (as was discussed in comments on a blog post I'd done about the update). And the person I was engaging with there then opened a tracker bug ticket with Adobe (CF-4223435) reporting the problem and my findings. We're hoping that root cause problem will be resolved, separate from this workaround mentioned in the udpated technote.

Finally, to your point about CFPM scripting to install the missing packages, yep that's something I was going to propose should be added in the technote above, to save people time and effort doing it in the CF Admin UI. I'll offer that in a new comment, as some may not notice it in my reply to you here. I will also share a problem related to doing that scripting, which has led to yet another tracker ticket I created today.

[Charlie Arehart]

Regarding re-installation of these several packages that are mistakenly uninstalled by update 15 of CF2021 (discussed briefly at the top here and in the update technote), while some will just click around in the CF Admin "package management" page several times, others will prefer to script this.  And even someone doing it only on one server may prefer a simpler process. 

1) Good news is that you can do this in one command with the cfpm CLI tool (introduced in CF2021). If you go to the CF's bin directory, you will find the cfpm.bat (for Windows) or cfpm.sh (for Linux, MacOS, and Solaris). Once you enter that cfpm interactively, you can then do this install of all the packages missing (per the mistake in this update), using:

install document, htmltopdf, pdf, presentation, print, report

I hope that this info may be added to the technote, as some folks will see that but not this discussion here.

2) Then again, some readers will know that the cfpm tool can work both interactively AND imperatively, where in the latter case you type "cfpm command" and it does the command without need to "enter the cfpm interactive cli". Sadly, though, I have found that that tool will not let us install more than one package at a time. So I mean that, on Windows for example, one can try to do:

C:\ColdFusion2021\cfusion\bin\cfpm install document, htmltopdf, pdf, presentation, print, report

But that fails with an error, "Invalid command. You have passed more parameters than required", even though clearly the  first command I show above clearly indicates that the install command supports multiple packages. This error occurs also with the cfpm uninstall command.  And I have filed a tracker bug report about it. Votes appreciated if you want to help get Adobe's attention on this.

In the meantime, I hope it may help some to see how easily multiple packages can be installed (at least within the cfpm CLI), without need of clicking and waiting several times in the CF Admin package management UI.

3) Finally, as for the root cause problem that's leading to this unexpected uninstalling of packages, this was raised last week in comments on my blog post about the CF updates, where others reported this unexpected uninstallation. As I studied it, I found what seems to be the real root cause problem within the update, and I reported the details as a comment there, and then the person raising the issue opened a Tracker ticket (CF-4223435) on this problem with CF2021 update 15.

Let's hope that root cause problem may be resolved, to save all this trouble (about reinstalling packages) for those who apply this update in the future. 🙂

[grawlc75800752]

My Update 15 failed when run manually from .jar and I had to download the bundled .zip files, replace the bundle contents, delete felix-cache, and then run cfpm.bat and used the command: install all .  Instance back up and running and Tomcat shows as 9.0.93, but the version still shows as 2021,0,14,330303 even with the update level showing as chf20210015.jar .  I did notice that some bundles in this update still reflect update 14.  Any suggestions on correcting this?

[hannah18]

Hi @grawlc75800752  ,
Looks like the update installation was unsuccessful. Can you please check the reason for failure in the logs present in <cf_home>/cfusion\hf-updates\hf-2021-00015-330303?
If the update failed because the files were locked. Please apply the update again with administrator privileges. 

[grawlc75800752]

Hey Hannah,

I should have looked at those logs, dopey me...  Turns out, I wasn't running the commandline with Admin privledges.  Just re-ran the .jar and it installed and the version is now correct.  Thanks for the reply!

[paule12345]

Is there an ETA on when Adobe is releasing a CF 2021 Update 15 installer that doesn't delete previously installed packages?

[jeffh65754959]

It was just posted that the new Update 16 includes the fix to this issue.
https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion-discussions/now-live-adobe-coldfusion-2023-and-2021-septem...