Iis – Modifying default website breaks ColdFusion multi instance administrator on IIS7

coldfusioniismultiple-instances

To recreate:

  1. Setup Server 2008 standard
  2. Install ColdFusion 8 Enterprise Multi instance
  3. Confirm that CF admin works by going to http://servername/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm from another PC.
  4. Open IIS Manager on test server
  5. Highlight the Default Web Site and click Basic Settings on the right
  6. Change the "physical path" to something other than the default. In my case I'm doing E:\directory

  7. CF admin is no longer accessible

  8. If you change the "physical path" back to C:\inetpub\wwwroot CF admin is still not accessible

  9. If you reinstall CF8 it will restore the working configuration mentioned in step 3 above.

Note "physical path" is an IIS term for the logical mapping from a site name to a directory where the content is held. In steps 6 and 8 I am not moving any files on the hard drive I am only changing settings in IIS. Also worth noting that I didn't change any settings in CF Admin or anywhere else in Windows or on the network. This is purely caused by changing a single setting in IIS.

On my production server I'm using CF8 standard and the physical path of the Default Web Site is E:\directory\subdirectory and the CF admin still works so I'm surprised to see this fail.

A. I want to know how to fix it without uninstalling and reinstalling CF8

B. I want to know if there is a way to change this without breaking stuff every time I do.

One suggestion is to remove and recreate the wsconfig mappings. This seems like a valid thing to explore the options are:

Jrun Host: localhost
Jrun Server: admin or cfusion
Web Server: IIS
IIS Web Site: All or Default Web Site
Configure web server for ColdFusion 8 applications: checked or unchecked

Which choices for Jrun Server and Configure match the ones that the setup does? I don't know if they match the setup but I can confirm that choosing the ones in bold fixes the overall CFADMIN page. Now I have to figure out how to get to the instances admin pages and confirm that I can make other changes without breaking anything.

Note: restored multiple-instances tag. Coldfusion behaves much differently in single instance mode than in Multi Instance mode. Questions about Cold fusion need to be tagged to show the difference. If you believe there is a better way to tag it do so but only if you understand the differences in the types of Coldfusion installations.

Best Answer

When you install ColdFusion it asks what folder your webroot is. In most cases this will be the same folder as the default web site in IIS. The installer puts the CFIDE folder into the default root, so when you go to that folder on the default web site, it loads up properly. When you change the folder of the default web site, however, the CFIDE folder is no longer in the folder specified and so you get a 404 error.

For any web site that needs to be able to get to the CF administrator, or needs to load the JavaScript validators for CFFORM among other things, you will need a CFIDE virtual folder mapping in IIS at the root level of each web site. You shouldn't need to reinstall ColdFusion or anything like that.

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