CFDebugging generates java errors on 2 of 3 clustered CF8 instances

[Naim.Beg]

Windows 2003 IIS 6.0 (using IIS as the web server)
Jrun 4.0 Updater 7
Java 1.6.0_02

I have 3 servers, IIS 6.0 and JRun and a CF8 installed installed on each.
The 3 CF8 instances are clustered in JRun on each server, then IIS ties in to
each cluster.

I noticed that on servers 2 and 3, with debugging turned on instead of
debugging out being generated, I am getting a java error.
[b]coldfusion.runtime.UndefinedVariableException: Variable CFDEBUGGER is
undefined.[/b]
(with a bunch of at additional stuff after which I am leaving out for space
limitations)

This is does not happen on server 1.
Why is the debugger choking?

Additionally I think this might be affecting a couple of apps on the server.

[Jochem van Dieten **AdobeCommunityExpert**]

Naim.Beg wrote:
> Windows 2003 IIS 6.0 (using IIS as the web server)
> Jrun 4.0 Updater 7
> Java 1.6.0_02
>
> I have 3 servers, IIS 6.0 and JRun and a CF8 installed installed on each.
> The 3 CF8 instances are clustered in JRun on each server, then IIS ties in to
> each cluster.
>
> I noticed that on servers 2 and 3, with debugging turned on instead of
> debugging out being generated, I am getting a java error.
> [b]coldfusion.runtime.UndefinedVariableException: Variable CFDEBUGGER is
> undefined.[/b]

Did you change the port number so they are all running on different ports?

Jochem

--
Jochem van Dieten
Adobe Community Expert for ColdFusion

[Naim.Beg]

No, I replicated how we setup up our CF7 environment environment.
If I remember correctly, the instructions had us use the same ports.

[Jochem van Dieten **AdobeCommunityExpert**]

Naim.Beg wrote:
> No, I replicated how we setup up our CF7 environment environment.

You might want to rethink that. Why do you need debugging in production
anyway and is that really worth the trouble and security risk? But if
you really need them, just give each a different port number.

> If I remember correctly, the instructions had us use the same ports.

Which instructions? If they were from Adobe please file a bug report
against them because multiple processes can not use the same port.

[xavier_b]

Hi,

Have you resolve this problem ? because I have the same problem. In the CF8
administrator I set a debug IP address and then selected the "Enable Request
Debugging Output " so that I could get some on-screen debug information for an
application I'm working on. It must be due to some configuration problem

"coldfusion.runtime.UndefinedVariableException: Variable CFDEBUGGER is
undefined."

Thanks beforehand for your reply.

xavier

[DCwebGuy]

Was this ever resolved? I am getting "Variable CFDEBUGGER is undefined" error
for CF8.1 Jrun installation. I have the same setup on 3 machines, but only one
machine is giving me this error. It occurs at the bottom of everypage, and
there is virtually nothing online about this problem. Please help. Thanks.

[Adam Cameron]

Didn't Jochem pretty much explain what the story is?

--
Adam

[DCwebGuy]

No, Jochem's explation is completely useless, as I am not doing anything with
clusters. Plus, as you can see he did not answer the other users' questions or
Xavier_b wouldn't be asking, either. I'm not doing anything funky with ports,
etc., just running normally then one day this debugger issue pops up for no
reason I can uncover. Someone please help? Thanks.

[Adam Cameron]

You might want to have a look @ the code in your
[cfusion]/WEB-INF/debug/classic.cfm (or whichever of the other two is more
appropriate if not that one).

It's fairly poorly coded because any problem arising from getting a reference
to the debugging service is suppressed, but then the rest of the code just
ass-u-me`s that it all worked.

Try taking the try/catch off from around the creation of CFDEBUGGER to see if
you get a more meaningful error. If not, try replicating that part of the file
in a different (browseable) template and see if you get a better error.

It looks like your debugging service isn't initialising for some reason... an
untrapped error might help cast light on the scene...

--
Adam

[carehart]

Well, digging into this a little, I see in the classic.cfm template (the
built-in CFML template that controls the layout in the debugging output), it
creates such a cfdebugger variable in a try/catch statement that ignores if it
gets an error (calling the servicefactory getdebuggingservice method).

Perhaps in the instances you guys are seeing, there's a temporary problem
that's disabled the debugging service. In these cases, does a restart solve the
problem? Even if you've not tried it (because they're production servers), it
may be worth trying. Perhaps something has happened to make the server (CF)
unstable and cause the debuggingservice to crash.

In fact, what do you see if you look in the CF out logs (in the
[cf]\runtime\logs or ]jrun4]\logs)? It may have errors indicating something
happening.

It could also be that someone has modified the classic.cfm template and just
made a mistake. There are various blog entries showing how to do it (such as
http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2008/11/26/Another-Hack-Job--Update-to-c
lassiccfm-debug-template).

It may help if you get the exact filename and line number of the template
throwing the error. I'm not referring to the page which you're requesting, but
that which is reporting the undefined cfdebugger variable?

To get the filename and line number, turn on robust exception handling in the
Admin (the same admonition about leaving that on in production applies, but
turning it on for a moment, if the error is easily creatable, should be no
great risk on most sites).

Hope the helps move the ball down the field a little.

/charlie

[carehart]

Wow, I see that my note yesterday arrived minutes after Adam's. We were
obviously writing at the same time and funny enough came to the same
conclusion. Just wanted to be clear I wasn't writing my note in reply to him,
but rather to the previous note by DCWebGuy.

Hope either helped. We'd love to hear from the two of you (or others) who had
the problem, if this helps identify the problem.

[DCwebGuy]

Charlie, your link over to coldfusionjedi.com helped solve the problem. Per
the blog, I UNchecked the setting "Disable access to internal ColdFusion Java
components" and now my debugger and cfdump work again. Great!

However, there is still a mystery because my other two servers have this
option checked (I believe it's checked by default) and I do not have any
problems over there, so I'm not sure why this one server flaked out. In any
case, the server with the problem was just for staging, so I am not too
concerned about unchecking that option for now.

Thanks for leading me in the right direction!

[carehart]

Glad it helped. As for the "disable access to internal cf java components",
I'll say that I wouldn't expect it to be checked by default, for this reason as
well as others. It's a useful security benefit for some, but it comes at a cost
so I'd not expect it to be the default. Maybe someone can confirm either way.

As for why you'd not have the problem on the 2 servers where it IS checked,
but unchecking it solved it on the 3rd, that is curious. Anyway, if no one has
an answer, at least for now this may serve as a solution for someone in the
future. Cheers.