Hi, guys. What Dave says is indeed true, but in this case the problem is something else, at least as it seems I have been able to replicate the error exactly. (I used info in Casey's offered error message/stack trace, to guess at and recreated the problem.)
TLDR; it seems to be caused if you have a malformed XML entry in a specific file, and I will show two quick steps you can check to confirm and perhaps resolve things, in a moment. I share some other related info, and I move that out to a blog post and then edit this post to point to that, to keep it shorter.
First, though, to address your concern it's not some bug in the connector (from my observation), and as for your fear about proceeding to production, you would NOT likely have the same error on another server, unless somehow it had the same malformed xml--and I've not heard of anyone else reporting this, and I can confirm the connector DOES work as expected in CF2021, when things are normal.
Here are those two steps to check things. More details will follow, explaining how I came to these conclusions (based on what you shared, and some experimentation) and sharing related things, if they may help others.
So, Casey:
- look for the web.xml in your CF wwwroot/WEB-INF. In a typical install it might be:
C:\ColdFusion2021\cfusion\wwwroot\WEB-INF\web.xml
- In that file, there should be (in CF2021) a section that looks like this:
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>Connector</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/__cf_connector_heartbeat__</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
In my testing, if that is somehow malformed XML, you will get the error you see. If the section IS there and correctly formed, the wsconfig tool will put a line (new in 2021) in the workers.properties file it creates (in the connector folder, like config/wsconfig/1) as:
worker.cfusion.heartbeat_servlet_path=/__cf_connector_heartbeat__
That's what's NOT happening for you, and in my testing the exact error you show WILL happen, if that web.xml has that section but is somehow malformed (in that section). More on if the section is "not there at all", below.
Let us know what you see and can report, Casey.
Longer explanation follows, for those interested:
Notice how one of the lines refers to com.adobe.coldfusion.connector.connectorinstaller.ConfigParser.getConnectorHeartbeatPath. That's related to something added first in CF2018, and changed slightly in CF2021.
The "heartbeat" is a mechanism built into the connector, whereby CF gathers info (via a given Adobe-created URL), tracking the "health" of the connector (between the web server and CF).
In CF2018, the value was a hard-coded /connector URL, but in CF2021 they have changed it to be not only a different value by default (that /__cf_connector_heartbeat__ , and that is indeed 2 dashes as I list above), but it's also now set also as a value in that web.xml file. Indeed, it's that CF uses that web.xml value to control what it puts in the workers.properties file--and the two of course need to match, so one could technically change the value if they are very careful, but it's now a unique enough value that no one should need to.)
FWIW, this heartbeat URL was a concern for those who found it showing up in their web server access logs, or in a monitor like FusionReactor. And the /connector was non-descript enough that it let many to be quite confused by it. At least now the new value might connect the docs a bit better for many.
(And note that you won't see any such heartbeat requests showing up until a request is made for a CF page via the web server, when the connector will then be loaded and the heartbeat requests will THEN start appearing, per the
heartbeat_interval line also set in that workers.properties file. The default is 30 seconds, and there will be one for each running web site, every 30 seconds once a first CF request comes to that site--so that can be a lot of these heartbeat url's appearing, in what may seem random intervals!)
Finally, FWIW, one can STOP the generation of these heartbeat requests entirely, by setting that heartbeat_interval to 0 (and restarting your web server). Some have done that when they felt that these heartbeat requests were causing trouble. It's rare that they do, but there you have it, if you're interested.
So again, back to Casey's original problem, when the wsconfig tool runs it now (in 2021) looks in that web.xml file to find that value, in that section. And it would put that value into the workers.properties. But if something is malformed about that section, then the process will fail, with that exact error and stack trace (down to the line numbers, for the current version of the connector, at least). When I say malformed, I mean like if a closing bracket was missing or something. So again, Casey, compare yours to what I offer above.
And FWIW, the error will NOT happen if this specific new section of the web.xml file does not exist, such as if it were somehow looking at a version of that file from CF2018 or earlier. Instead, there would be no error at all, and that line in the workers.properties wouldn't be written at all. (I also tested if the malformation in the XML was in some other part of the web.xml, and the wsconfig didn't trip over that. It was only if this one new section was malformed.)
I tested all these things this morning, after seeing Casey's post here this morning. It struck me as a very interesting challenge to understand. I hope that what I've shared here will not only help him get past his problem somehow, but may also help others who go searching for info on the heartbeat and especially this new URL.
That new URL is not documented anywhere that I found, but I did discover it during research for my Hidden Gems talk at CF Summit, where I mentioned it. I have just tweaked that mention to add where it's found also in these two files.
But Casey, as for how your web,xml would be malformed in this section, that's certainly interesting, so I'll look forward to what you may find and report, or if something new for us to consider.
/Charlie (troubleshooter, carehart.org)
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