CF and Linux: The Real Deal

 
Dec 14, 2002
by Judith Dinowitz

This article is an outgrowth of my own puzzlement when reading "Linux ColdFusion Users Irate with Macromedia," a December 2 eWeek article by Darryl K. Taft (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,741132,00.asp). The article, which caused quite a storm on the CF-Linux and CF-Talk lists on House of Fusion (www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists), and on the MXDev list on Devmx.com, stated that "problems with the San Francisco company's software on Linux have prompted hundreds of user complaints to the Macromedia Web site regarding server crashes and other anomalies." That sky-is-falling attitude of the article, and the claim that hundreds of users have complained on Macromedia?s website, led me to some research of my own.

I tried to find evidence that "hundreds of user complaints" were in fact voiced at Macromedia.com, but could not find it. I attempted to contact the author of the eWeek article to ascertain the source of his claims, but he did not respond to my email. I have even contacted Linux users on the CF-Linux list at House of Fusion to ask about their hands-on experiences with CFMX, both good and bad. The questions I asked focused on whether they had experienced problems with CFMX, to determine what was done to resolve them and how Macromedia responded to them. Finally, I spoke to Phil Costa, Senior Product Manager at Macromedia, to get Macromedia?s side of the story. My purpose here was to cut through the fear-mongering and get to the truth.

Costa was eager to dispel some of the confusion about what he felt was eWeek?s misrepresentation of the customer situation and Macromedia?s response to it. He was forthright in saying that there are some open issues with Linux, but added that Macromedia has been working to resolve these issues through its standard support channels.

What process does Macromedia have in tech support for resolving these issues? Costa said that Macromedia documents each issue that comes in and tries to reproduce it. It doesn?t generally take a long time to find out what?s causing the problem. "The key here is that there has to be a structured and well-documented set of information, because otherwise we can?t respond in any meaningful way."

Costa emphasized that there are issues with software programs on any platform, just as there are with ColdFusion on Linux, and referred to a TechNote on Linux and CFMX that lists the various bugs and problems that have been found, including configuration recommendations and known issues: http://www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=23524&Method=Full.

He also stressed that, because Macromedia puts fixes for their software products into Updaters, customers should always be sure to download and install the latest version of the Updater. Macromedia is currently on Updater version 2. For information about the issues resolved by Updater 2 and the links to download it, visit: http://dynamic.macromedia.com/bin/MM/software/trial/hwswrec.jsp?product=cfmx_updater.

The CFMX Release Notes also contain a great deal of information relevant to Linux users: http://www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/releasenotes/mx/releasenotes_mx.html.

The Scope of the Problem

Where did the author of the eWeek article get the idea that Linux customers are extremely upset with Macromedia? And why do CFMX problems occur mainly in the Linux environment, rather than in Windows?

"We have a lot more customers on Windows than we do on any other platform. We also had a lot more Windows customers participating in the beta. To the extent that customers on Linux can participate in the beta, it only leads to quality. There are certain problems that we only uncover in the real-world environment," said Costa.

Every Linux customer should take the following steps when upgrading to CFMX:

  • Set up a test environment, regardless of the platform.
  • Read the documentation, especially the manual. It has a lot of information about CFMX on different platforms.
  • Use the tools that Macromedia provides, especially the code compatibility analyzer.
  • Install the latest version of the CFMX Updater.
  • Install the new connector patches for Linux or Solaris, which are available at http://www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=23524. These patches are not included in the Updater 2. They were released a few days after my interview with Phil Costa and indicate that Macromedia is working to resolve the issues relating to Linux.
  • Be sure that you change the settings in the jrun.xml file to the recommended settings detailed at: http://www.macromedia.com/v1/Handlers/index.cfm?ID=23524.
  • Read the Technote(s) that are published about Linux. They provide the most current information about running on Linux. Given the unresolved CFMX issues, users will have to make a determination about whether CFMX is the right choice for them.

Users Speak Up

It was my intent not to make broad assumptions about the Linux ColdFusion community, so I put out a call for feedback. Here are six different experiences that customers have had with CFMX on Linux:

  1. The experience that seemed most like the tone of the eWeek article is that of Kevin Bridges, Senior Applications Engineer for Collect America, LTD. Bridges said, "We are running a dev farm and a production farm and could paint quite the colorful picture about the hardships and weirdness we have endured. We are running Red Hat 7.3 and Oracle 8.1.5 and 8.1.6. I was asked to wait for this second CFMX updater before completely losing faith in the MX product line. I am impressed by Macromedia's commitment to making the product work on Linux, but reality has come very close to pushing us away from CFMX until it matures." (Since this interview took place, Bridges installed the Updater 2 and he said he is doing much better now.)

  2. Toby Tremayne, Senior Technical Consultant, Lyricist Software, is solidly behind ColdFusion on Linux but noted that there are problems. Tremayne loves Linux for its security and stability and because it's significantly faster than Windows. He runs both CF5 and CFMX on SuSe Linux, and says that ColdFusion, once installed properly, is the easiest thing to maintain.

    "I do like CFMX, although it has the 'feel' of a beta release, especially on Linux. [There are] too many issues with the installer, enormous difficulties getting various things to work with the 'supported' postGreSQL database (stored procedures for example, just don't work properly at all) and some really nasty error messages that ? don't identify the actual problem and ? tend to display a completely different piece of code as being the problem, when in fact the error is due to something else entirely."

    Tremayne said that the issues with the installer are a key factor. "The installer for CFMX goes smoothly enough, but the problem is that 9 times out of 10, ? the installer will complete successfully, [but] that doesn't mean CFMX will run. There's been absolute minimal effort put into the Linux installers, in every version I've ever installed. Nothing but the most absolutely base generic setups of Red Hat will work 'out of the box' and nobody runs a server system like that. With a little more testing, and taking the time to build a slightly smarter installer, we wouldn't have these problems."

    One example Tremayne gave is that the mod_jrun.c object is often not installed at all, and every time there's an update to Apache the installer will fail. "All this nonsense about the magic module number in the Apache releases is mind-boggling in my opinion, as installers for things such as PHP don't seem to find this a problem."

    But Tremayne stated that he appreciates the support that Macromedia gives in its forums. "There are Macromedia staff members helping out on the forums, and on the mailing lists ? which is great. There are a bunch of people giving them a very hard time, but they're still doing what they can. I appreciate the help we get on that end, but I think if Macromedia put a little more work into the installer and their Apache connectors then a lot of people would be a great deal happier."

  3. Dennis Baldwin, co-founder of devmx.com and founder of flashcfm.com, is an avid Linux fan and a big supporter of ColdFusion. His installations of CFMX on Linux tend to go smoothly as long as the recommended libraries are installed. He encountered problems on three separate installs of CFMX, and noted that CFMX is not as stable as CF5 on the Linux platform. "We upgraded from CF5 and ran into all kinds of problems, including the issue with spawning threads until the service eventually stops responding. If this issue could be resolved, I think it will benefit the community tremendously ? [and] make CFMX on Linux a more viable product." He added that CFMX is very easy to maintain once you get it up and running and overcome the problems mentioned above.

    Baldwin has contacted Macromedia for support, but ultimately found answers either through community resources or on the Macromedia forums. The resources he recommends for Linux users are the CF-Linux list on House of Fusion (http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists) and the MXDev list on DevMX.com. "Macromedia has great support and resources,? he said, ?? I only wish they could invest more time and resources with the Linux community."

  4. Michael Brandt, Senior Software/Sales Engineer, Recruitmax Software, said that his company, Creative System Solutions, did not experience any major issues when installing CFMX on Linux. His company creates enterprise recruiting software for clientele that includes some well-known recruiting firms, and although they do testing for clients on Linux, their in-house work is accomplished within a hosted Windows environment. So this was a jump from Windows to Linux for them. Brandt said that minor installation issues are normal with any software product. "Everyone has a problem when you first install something. You just have to work through it. The biggest thing is checking all your code [and] knowing Linux." He noted that those moving from Windows to Linux need to be aware of case sensitivity (Linux is case-sensitive while Windows is not).

  5. Don Cosseboom, Director of Research and Development at Molecular, Inc. (a 100-person, Boston-based consulting firm) said that his development team just completed a two-month long project using CFMX on Linux. This was the first time they had used ColdFusion at all, and aside from some initial installation issues, they had no problems whatsoever. Cosseboom explained that they had been running on an unsupported version of Apache. Once they figured that out, and installed the right version, their problems were solved.

    In fact, contrary to the claims of the eWeek article, Molecular, Inc. had a rather good experience with Macromedia. They contacted tech support and had a callback within 24 hours. "We had a very positive experience, even considering it was our first time using ColdFusion for any real development project." Cosseboom said he would highly recommend CFMX for Linux, and that he can find any information he needs from Macromedia?s site, or from technical support.

  6. Perhaps most encouraging of all is the experience of Joseph Thompson, a Certified ColdFusion Developer. At first, Mr. Thompson was having difficulties installing CFMX on Linux, and put it down to his ignorance of Linux as a platform. In the last two months, he has been able to install and run CFMX with no problems at all. "If you actually follow the directions to the letter and install the supported versions of Linux and Apache, the whole install is a cake walk." He says that he even has PostGres and MySQL going now, although his lack of Linux experience is making the whole process very tedious.

Putting it in Perspective

After listening to the experiences of the customers above, I have come to the following conclusions:
  • One?s experience with CFMX on Linux varies greatly depending on how well one knows the Linux operating system, and on how closely one follows the practices and configurations recommended by Macromedia.
  • Most of the users I spoke to said that ColdFusion was easy to maintain once CFMX was installed properly on Linux.
  • If you install the recommended libraries and use the recommended installation of Apache, etc., CFMX on Linux seems to be a fairly stable and powerful application.
  • Macromedia states that the Linux user base is much smaller than the Windows user base, although I was not able to get any information about relative numbers. Therefore, it is not as heavily represented in their beta testing. This does make a difference when ferreting out bugs before a release.
  • Far from the universal outcry against CFMX, most users I have spoken to are happy with CFMX on Linux, but are unhappy with some of the technical problems with installing it. This seems to be a standard complaint, for those that like ColdFusion and those that don?t. Macromedia might accomplish much by creating a better installer program for its Linux version of ColdFusion (as suggested by Toby Tremayne).
  • Even those who were unhappy with the product acknowledge the effort put forth by the Macromedia Linux team to help them.
What I did not see is the monolithic dissatisfaction among Linux users that is portrayed in the eWeek article.

Linux Resources:

A special thanks to Phil Costa and Melissa Sheridan of Macromedia, Michael Brandt, Don Cosseboom, Dennis Baldwin, Toby Tremayne, Kevin Bridges, Joseph Thompson, the people on the CF-Linux list, Michael Dinowitz, Dina Hess, Eron Cohen and Malkah Cohen, for your contributions and/or feedback.

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