Charlie Arehart - Server Troubleshooting - lucee

Delighted to be speaking at Into the Box 2025, in early May

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 10:50:00 -0500

I'm delighted to announce that I've been selected to speak at the upcoming Into the Box event (in DC in early May), where I'll be presenting "Hidden Gems in FusionReactor: for BoxLang, ACF, and Lucee Users". This should not be confused of course with the "Hidden Gems in CF2025" talk which I also just announced that I'd be presenting at the upcoming CF Summit East (next week in DC) and CFCamp (in Munich in late May). It'll be a busy few weeks! :-) As with them, it's always a thrill to attend this annual event. Following is the topic description and more. [More]

Workaround for performance issue in CF's use of Redis for sessions

Tue, 28 May 2024 15:55:00 -0500

This is important news for those using CF's feature to store sessions (session variables for all sessions) in Redis. Some folks, using it with CF2021 or 2023 found CF was somehow heavily impacting their Redis instance. The good news is that I've found an easy fix/workaround (until Adobe fixes it formally). For more (including why you may or may NOT be impacted by the issue), read on. [More]

Delighted to be presenting at CFCamp 2024, on "Using Redis for session storage in ACF and Lucee"

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 11:55:00 -0500

I'm delighted to share the news that I've been selected to be a presenter again at the wonderful CFCamp event, being held again June 13-14 in Munich, Germany. (I got the news last week but have been overwhelmed with recent work, so I've been behind posting such news. I have still more to come.) As one of the premier conferences for both Adobe ColdFusion and Lucee, I highly recommend you attend the event if you can. Plus, if you don't live in Europe it's a great excuse to vacation on the continent and be tax-deductible at the same time! :-) My talk this year (my 8th straight appearance at the event) will be a new one for me. Here are the details: [More]

Recent critical Lucee security vulns - make sure you're protected, finding out more about them

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 11:22:00 -0500

There has been important news released (this week and last week) about a critical Lucee security vuln (an RCS or remote code execution vuln). You'll want to make sure your Lucee instances are protected either by updates or configuration (or both). There are actually 3 matters to beware. [More]

Recordings and links for my presentations in Jan 2024, Dec 2023

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 11:06:00 -0500

I've done a few online presentations in recent weeks, and while I've done a blog post announcing each when it was upcoming, I was torn about also doing a blog post after each, just to mention their recording URL. I don't want people to feel there are "too many" posts. Also, since I use youtube live for the CFMeetup sessions, technically the url for the meeting is indeed the same one to use to view the recording of it: so if you know one, you know both. But some people seem to notice when news is shared of a recording being made available, so here you go.:-) These are 4 sessions I've done in Jan 2024 and Dec 2023. [More]

Presenting "Updating the Java underlying ColdFusion - considering it, doing it" Thurs Jan 18, Online

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 10:15:00 -0500

As most know, ColdFusion runs atop Java (and has since CF6). Did you know that JVM updates come out quarterly (including one just this week)? While some may find the process of doing them to be "old hat", others are often surprised to discover it's their responsibility to keep that Java updated. And on the surface, "installing Java" is easy--but like so many other things, "the devil is in the details". So I ~~will be presenting~~ presented a talk on this topic, online ~~this Thursday, at noon US Eastern~~, on the CFMeetup youtube livestream (which ~~will be~~ was recorded). Folks who are members of the Online ColdFusion Meetup will already have gotten notification about this, but for those who are not, here are the details: [More]

Several things to consider when applying updates to Java (aka the JVM, JDK, JRE)

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:23:00 -0500

(Posted originally in Jan 2024, updated in Oct 2025.) If you run server software that runs atop Java and you learn there's a new Java update available, it may well be relatively simple for you to apply that update if you do it often. If you don't, and you are running important server applications which rely upon Java, then it's in your interest to give some consideration to various matters related to doing such an update. That's the primary focus of this post. And as important, if you may have skipped some Java updates before this one, there are some additional points to consider regarding some potentially important changes in those updates that you may be skipping. For more on the above, read on. [More]

My meta resource page about updating CF, the Java underlying it, the wsconfig, and more

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 17:39:00 -0500

With all the recent updates to CF (and the ongoing need to keep up and related things up-to-date), I wanted to share some news: I've long had on my site a meta resource page regarding keeping ColdFusion updated, where I offered both links and tips related to updating CF as well as the JVM underlying CF, the web server connector(wsconfig), the CF PMT, FusionReactor, CF Builder (old Eclipse and new VSCode versions) and even Lucee. It's been on my site as my "CFUpdate" page (linked to from my old-school top-level nav bar), and I've kept the page updated. [Hey, updating my meta resource on updates. That's SO meta!] But I suspect a lot of people may never find it for one reason or another, so I wanted to offer a link to it here. Check it out, and I welcome comments or feedback here.

What's new in FusionReactor 9.2.0, released Jan 18 2023

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 01:15:00 -0500

If you're a user of the wonderful FusionReactor monitoring and observability solution (for ColdFusion, Lucee, Java servers and more), you may delight in hearing news of a new FusionReactor (FR) version. 9.2.0 was released last week, Jan 18, 2023. You can learn more (in brief) about what's new in the bullets for 9.2.0 offered at the release notes page. TLDR: For some folks, news of the new version is all the need to hear. For those who may like to hear a bit more about the update, read on. [More]

Presenting tomorrow on comparing CF docker images, at IntotheBox Precon

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:12:00 -0500

Just a heads-up to my readers that I'll be giving a talk tomorrow (Thurs, Sep 1 at noon Eastern) on "Comparing and contrasting Docker images from Ortus, Adobe, and Lucee", at the Into the Box "pre-conference" event. Update 9/1/22: the recording was posted. I'll link to it in the discussion about getting access to those (not free, for now). The preconference sessions (like the full conference sessions next week) are NOT free, but they ARE available to anyone who signs up for the conference, which is just $99 (until midnight Sep 6) for a virtual pass, giving you access to over 30 sessions on all kinds of content related to CF, CFML, Lucee, and web technology. More in a moment about finding more on those sessions and accessing recordings, which ARE included in that virtual event ticket. First, as for my talk, it will be: [More]

Confirming ColdFusion's Java version, via admin, vars, or code

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 11:13:00 -0500

Have you ever wished you could confirm with 100% certainty what Java version is in use by the CF instance you are running? Or where the JVM's location is (in case you are told to modify files related to it)? Some good news is that ColdFusion offers simple ways/variables that can show you each of these, via the admin or via CFML code. In this post, I discuss both approaches, including a simple single variable which works in CF2018 and above, a variation for those on CF2016 and earlier, as well as variations for Lucee. [More]

Did you know that CF2018 imports environment vars into the Server scope?

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 16:45:00 -0500

This is a hidden gem that I never saw documented anywhere: CF2018 now imports environment variables into the CF "server" scope, specifically: server.system.environment and java system properties into: server.system.properties (Thanks to Sean C for catching a mistake in the initial post.) I learned of it last year when Pete F tweeted about it, and I assumed someone else would do a post about it, but the topic came up in a discussion today and I was surprised to not be able to find any mention of it, other than that and his mention of it in his cfdocs.org site. And yes, Lucee had it first (as proposed initially in 2015). :-) The feature can be useful, whether you're setting such vars when running a (Docker) container, or via JVM args, etc., and you want to be able to access them within CFML.

Configuring FusionReactor to show "real ip address" when behind a load balancer or other proxy

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 18:27:00 -0500

If your server is behind a load balancer or other sort of proxy, you may have noticed that when you view information about requests in FusionReactor, they all have the same (or nearly the same) IP address. This can be easily fixed, and I show you how in this post. [More]

Speaking at CFCamp 2019, for the 10th talk/7th year!

Tue, 20 Aug 2019 23:23:00 -0500

Following on my recent announcement about speaking at CF Summit 2019, I am delighted to announce also that I've been selected to speak at CFCamp 2019, in Munich this October. This will be my sixth year in a row presenting at this wonderful event, and my seventh year total. It will also be my 10th presentation there. (You can see all my past presentations, including when and where offered, at carehart.org/presentations.) FWIW, half of those talks have been "sponsor" presentations on behalf of Intergral, the makers of FusionReactor, while the rest were not. And despite the title of my talk this year, "Comparing Monitoring Solutions for CF and Lucee", it is NOT an FR-sponsored talk. See the description below, for more. [More]

Considering use of Amazon Corretto, the new openjdk jvm, especially with ColdFusion

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 17:28:00 -0500

As I posted earlier today, there are big changes afoot in the Java world, about production (not just "commercial") use of Java going forward. This is big news, as it is for anyone using Java 8 or 11 for production purposes. But here's some good news: Amazon has recently released a new free JVM (java virtual machine) implementation based on the OpenJDK specification, called Corretto. In this post, I want to share some news about it. (Off the bat, let me tell my friends on any Linux flavor other than Amazon Linux 2, this is not yet available to you. For now it is only available for Amazon Linux 2 as well as Windows, MacOS, and as a docker image. Other Linux flavors are due in Q1 2019.) For much more, read on.

Update in Jan 2019: This is no longer an option for CF folks to consider, as Adobe announced both that they have licensed Oracle Java for production use by those using CF, and they clarified that they will NOT be adding support for any OpenJDK implementations. I will leave this post and the rest, for non-CF users and for posterity.

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