Setting Up Coldfusion With A G-Mail Account

One does not simply setup G-Mail in Coldfusion

I wanted to setup a mail account on a website i was developing so notifications could be sent out. I tried to configure my G-Mail account in my development environment. Even though my username and password were correct, Coldfusion wasn't able to actually send the e-mails. I had followed the instructions from Google but no dice. After looking through the error logs I found a recurring error message that read:

com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPSendFailedException: 530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first

It seems that even though the server name, username and password were correct, I needed to enable TLS (and after a few tries I found out you also need to enable SSL) through port 465. That seemed to solve the issue.

In short, when setting up your G-Mail account on the CF Administrator, make sure you specify stmp.gmail.com as the mail server, your full email address as the user name, your password, port 465, and make sure you have both SSL and TLS enabled, like  so:

After this I was finally able to send the e-mails. Boromir would be proud.

Running Coldfusion 10 on OS X Mavericks

I installed OS X Mavericks on my work computer. At first everything seemed great, not much of a departure from its predecessor, OS X Mountain Lion. For what I heard, most of the changes seem to be on what's working under the hood. Everything was going well until I wanted to get back to work on my development environment; turns out ColdFusion wasn't working any more...

yes, I'm a cat

After doing some research, I found out 2 major problems:

1. Mavericks comes with Java 7.
2. ColdFusion's web connector (mod_jk.so) does not work with Mavericks.

Fortunately, there is a solution for both.

The problem with CF is that it is currently pointing to the directory where the JDK 6 was located, so we must adjust the CF configuration so that it points to the new JDK 7. You can do so by following the instructions here:

http://www.n42designs.com/blog/index.cfm/2013/10/23/Running-ColdFusion-10-on-OS-X-Mavericks

Once you have mapped Java 7 in CF, we have to fix the web connector so that it works with Mavericks. Originally, this implied making a change in the web connector's source code, recompile it and replace the old one with the new one. Fortunately someone figured out that part already and even posted the new mod_jk.so file publicly, which you can download here:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=ACCA7C11400D15FA!618&authkey=!AOZJmH3HBrjvJ7s

After downloading the file, replace the old mod_jk.so with the new one you just downloaded in /Applications/ColdFusion10/config/wsconfig/1/.

Finally, start the ColdFusion server and congratulations! you now have ColdFusion 10 running on OS X Mavericks. Meow.

Credits go out to Sean Coyne at n42designs.com for coming up with the solution and a fellow developer named "Mike" that you can find at that site's comment section, who fixed the web connector and posted it online.

“Failed Signature verification” error while attempting to install updates on Coldfusion 10

When installing updates on your Coldfusion server via the Coldfusion Administrator application, you might see a pop-up window with an error message that reads:

Error occurred while installing the update:
Failed Signature Verification


This is because, as per the Adobe website:

All ColdFusion updates are now signed with the new code signing certificate because of a code signing certificate revocation.

To solve this issue, you must install the Coldfusion Mandatory Update, which you may find on the Adobe website at the following address:

http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/downloads_updates.html

Look for the ColdFusion 10 Mandatory Update (JAR, 5MB) link further down the page and click to download.

Once you have downloaded the Java Archive (JAR) file,  install it by following the directions at the following web address:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/10.0/Admin/WSe61e35da8d318518-33adffe0134c60cd31c-7ffe.html

To make sure that the update was properly installed, access the Coldfusion Administrator and go to the Settings Summary page under the Settings section. On the System Information section, in the Server Details table, check that the Version is set to either ColdFusion 10,283111 or ColdFusion 10,282913. If so, the update was properly installed and you may now apply the pending updates on the Updates page.

Be reminded that each latest update released includes all fixes from its predecessors, meaning, if the latest update is Update 10 you may directly proceed to install it without needing to first install updates 1-9.