Could not initialize class sun.font.SunFontManager in Official Docker Container

[powertoast]

I am running the official Docker Coldfusion Container:

eaps-docker-coldfusion.bintray.io/cf/coldfusion:latest

When I try to create a PDF using <CFDOCUMENT>, I receive the following error message.

I know that lucee had some problems with this based on the Java version, but I assumed that the official image/container would work.

Here is the code block it works great on the exact same version of ColdFusion installed locally.

<cfdocument format="pdf" scale="#URL.scale#">
   <cfoutput>#cfhttp.filecontent#</cfoutput>
</cfdocument>

Thank you

[Dave Watts]

I'm not so sure that's going to work. The Docker container has a pretty stripped-down version of CF in it, as far as I can tell. CF normally comes with a bunch of platform-specific libraries as well as CF itself. You can connect it to an external add-on service - which would normally be installed on the same machine as CF - but this external add-on service isn't actually part of the Docker container. There are several Docker environment variables that will let you point it to an external source.

Compounding my answer a little bit is that I'm not sure whether the add-on service is responsible for CFDOCUMENT or just the newer CFHTMLTOPDF tags. But I do know that either way, it's using stuff that's not actually part of CF. So I'm not so confident it'll work in any case.

Dave Watts, Eidolon LLC

[BeRadB]

I just ran into this issue, today.

is there a way to specify a pdf service running on a different machine?

[felix822]

Did you ever figure out the solution? I just updated Java to openJDK 11 and getting the same error now. 

[Vikram_Kumar_M]

@felix822 

Try this:

Step 1: Get inside the container and run the below command:

apt install fontconfig

Step 2:   Edit jvm.config file and add the below argument:

--add-exports java.desktop/sun.font=ALL-UNNAMED

Save the file and restart the container.

Thanks,

Vikram

[felix822]

Sorry, that did not work for me. But unlike the OP, I am not running a container - it's a VM running Coldfusion 2016 server (Update 17).  

[BKBK]

Perhaps a more appropriate way to add the flag to ColdFusion's jvm.config is:

--add-exports=java.desktop/sun.font=ALL-UNNAMED

Another tip (for ColdFusion 2016 Update 17): use the latest JDK 11.