Regular listers will no doubt recall the 'discussion' (to use the mildest word I can find) not so long ago about my hosting company who was having difficulty installing Updater3 on the CFMX server that houses many of my own sites and client sites.
(For those that don't, a quick recap - read the archives if you need more details: UD3 wasn't being installed, and one of my clients was being affected by one of the bugs in the non-updated CFMX. He wanted it updated and it's a good practice to keep everything up to date anyway. My host Sysadmin was taking his time doing it, and hadn't pushed the right buttons at Macromedia to get the right level of help there. I had written to Macromedia in the US to ask them to help and obviously hadn't written to the right person or picked a day when other things were going on or whatever, because I had no reply after a few hours. But with a Friday running out of afternoon in the US, and the prospect of an angry client by Monday, I needed to stir up activity quickly, so I posted here on the list. Macromedia were extremely rapid to react (more below) and my post provoked many on this list to accuse me of, or imply, many shortcomings on my part or that of my hosting company. The flaming got more and more strident as the hours wore on till finally I said I was not going to post on the subject until it was all over. Now read on ... ) THE HOSTING COMPANY: My only issue with my hosting company is that they hadn't put enough urgency on the fix as I'd needed. I don't know what else they had on their plate at the time, and it doesn't matter to me really. My client and I both needed them to act quicker on it than they were and after my posting here, I lifted my issue on their radar screen. For those who thought I must have a clueless Sysadmin, or a hosting company who cut too many corners, let me say it took Macromedia's people several days to identify this problem and set up to reproduce it. I think while I have a right to expect my Sysadmin to have a working knowledge of all the software installed on the systems he looks after, it is asking a lot to expect him to know what it took Macromedia's specialists several days to identify. MACROMEDIA'S SUPPORT: I am MOST IMPRESSED with Damon Cooper of this list and the TEAM of people he summoned to deal with the issue. They might have been either unaware of the issue or relaxed about the degree of urgency, but once I raised the interest of Damon Cooper, the reaction was both faster and more comprehensive than I could have hoped. They got stuck into the problem, and worked at it like terriers till it was fixed. Many support people in other outfits I've dealt with tend to work like terriers on an issue until the client calms down then slow down or go work on the next panic issue, leaving the basic problem still on the spike waiting to be fixed. Not these guys. They stayed with it till it was solved. All weekend as far as I can see. I assume the results of their efforts will be found in the next release of CFMX. Both my hosting company and I got regular progress updates, including a few "we're still working on it, nothing new to report just now" reports. And as I understand it, Macromedia's picked up the tab for the whole thing, since it was an installation issue. THE ISSUE: Despite some listers' attempt to convince me otherwise, this was indeed a genuine issue. It was NOT that we had a clueless Sysadmin. It was NOT that I had tried to save too much money and found a hosting company that cut too many corners. It was NOTHING to do with my own installations at home/office/dev servers. It was NOT to do with poor planning on anyone's part. Damon has explained the issue here on the list and it appears to have been a couple of problems working simultaneously. First of all, the servers had 16 colours set, the default for Win2K and had been fine for installations of every CF prior to this update. UD3 requires 256 colours set. (I note that the system requirements now state you have to have 256 colours) Furthermore, this issue has highlighted another problem that had been elusive. As Damon said the other day it was to do with the timeout for JRUN.EXE to start. He said, "On machines with a lot going on during startup, or complex services dependencies, or slow machines, the 'jrun.exe' executable can exceed the 20 second timeout in successfully starting. When this timeout is exceeded, the Service wrapper executable "gives up", returns a failure code and CFMX is not started." That is why so many people hadn't experienced the problem - if their systems started JRUN.EXE faster than 20 seconds for whatever reason they didn't see the problem. It was a pity that so many people thought because they hadn't had the problem it must be MY fault somehow. In fact they were lucky that they hadn't had the problem emerge on their systems. Anyway, the end result is (a) AFP Webworks now runs its budget hosting business on updated and working machines, running production servers on CFMX UD3, and (b) we now all know about the 16 colour/256 colour issue and (c) Macromedia have shown their true colours - they'll move mountains if necessary to resolve installation issues and (d) Macromedia have altered the installation routines for the next version (I assume) and the documented system requirements to account for these issues. That's pretty fast response I reckon. Well done Damon Cooper, and Stephen Dupre and the others at Macromedia, and a heartfelt THANK YOU! Cheers, Michael Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
