ColdFusion 11: "Getting Started Server"

G'day:
The first seemingly good thing that ColdFusion 11 offers is a "Getting Started Server", which is an installation-free version of ColdFusion server. It's just a zip file.

I'm downloading it now (it's still 282MB, but that's much smaller than the 597MB for the full installer)...

OK, so it really is just a zip file. There was no instructions of what to do to get it running (like a readme.txt file), but I had a ferret around and worked it out. It was pretty easy.

I've unzipped this stuff into C:\apps\adobe\ColdFusion\11beta\gettingstarted, and within that there's a config.ini, which contains this:

#Server Configuration
password_admin=
password_rds=
license_key=
license_key_previous=


Note that for me (on Windows 8) this seems to have been saved with *nix line breaks not Windows ones, so if opening it in notepad.exe, it looks a bit munged. But opening in a decent text editor it's OK.

I left that file as-is, and hunted further. In cfusion\bin was the stuff I was after: cfstart.bat, and coldfusion.exe. cfstart.bat is simply this:

@echo off
coldfusion.exe -start -console

Which looks reasonable, so I just ran it. After a lot of bumpf scrolling past in the console, I ended up with this:

Feb 20, 2014 07:36:37 AM Information [localhost-startStop-1] - ColdFusion: application services are now available
Feb 20, 2014 7:36:37 AM org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext log
INFO: CFMxmlServlet: Macromedia Flex Build: 87315.134646
20/02 07:36:37 INFO Macromedia Flex Build: 87315.134646
Feb 20, 2014 7:36:41 AM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol start
INFO: Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-apr-8500"]
Feb 20, 2014 7:36:41 AM org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol start
INFO: Starting ProtocolHandler ["ajp-apr-8014"]
Feb 20, 2014 7:36:41 AM com.adobe.coldfusion.launcher.Launcher run
INFO: Server startup in 12913 ms
Feb 20, 2014 07:36:47 AM Error [Thread-13] - Connect to localhost:8987 [localhost/127.0.0.1, localhost/0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1] failed: Connection refused: connect http://localhost:8987/PDFgServlet/

The latter bit didn't look so good, but I am feeling positive, so I am assuming the "ColdFusion: application services are now available" is what I'm after, so all good. Let's see.

I run my trusty serverdump.cfm and this is what I get:

struct
coldfusion	struct InstallKit Native Windows appserver Tomcat expiration {ts '2014-05-15 07:36:32'} productlevel Evaluation productname ColdFusion Server productversion 11,0,0,288464 rootdir C:\apps\adobe\ColdFusion\11beta\gettingstarted\cfusion supportedlocales
os	struct additionalinformation [empty string] arch amd64 buildnumber [empty string] name Windows 8 version 6.2

There you have it. ColdFusion 11,0,0,288464 up and running, via an express install.

Oh... contrary to what the config file above might suggest, the CFAdmin password is actually "admin", btw. It took me a while to guess it. They should probably fix that.

This is a major win for ColdFusion here: having this express install. Hopefully if they push it properly, this could improve ColdFusion uptake. But they do need to push it properly.

Next... I'm gonna try running some code...

--
Adam