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Exciting news coming in FusionReactor webinar this Thursday

The FusionReactor folks will offer a webinar this Thurs, Mar 24, at noon US Eastern, "Introducing Distributed tracing and on-prem observability".

I highly recommend that FusionReactor users (and others) register. (Even if you can't attend, you will get access to the recording.) It's about some totally new capabilities:

  • Note that it's about changes coming in both the FR Cloud and in the traditional "on-prem" FR UI. As such, the new capabilities should be very compelling even for those FR users who have not yet bothered to (or for some reason cannot ) use FR Cloud
  • Also, it's about more than what's been made available yet to those beta testing the new "logging" feature in FR Cloud
  • Finally, for those who DO use FR Cloud, there may be discussion of upcoming changes regarding the FR Cloud UI itself

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FusionReactor 8.7.7 released, enhances the recent DB and API Time feature

I had blogged in early November about how FusionReactor 8.7.4 had added at that time a new feature where it lists on request summary pages the DB and API Time of each request, so you could readily tell how much of a request's duration might have been caused by time spent waiting for either of those kinds of resources.

Now in 8.7.7, which was released last week (Mar 1), the benefit of that feature has been extended so that a) the same information is written to both the FusionReactor request logs and b) it's also now available in FR crash protection alert emails. In this post, I'll show you examples of what's changed for each, and I'll note another related changes in the prior FR update, 8.7.6.

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New updates released for Java 8, 11, and 17, as of Jan 2022

New JVM updates have been released last week (Jan 18, 2022) for the current long-term support (LTS) releases of Oracle Java, 8, 11, and 17. (Note that prior to Java 9, releases of Java were known technically as 1.x, to 8 is referred to in resources below as 1.8.) I'd shared the news in a tweet last week, but was delayed in getting this post out.

The new updates are 1.8.0_321, (aka 8u321), 11.0.14, and 17.0.2, respectively).

For more on them, including information on the security fixes and bug fixes they each contain, see the Oracle resources I list below, as well as some additional info I offer for if you may be skipping to this from a JVM update from before Apr 2021, as well as info for Adobe ColdFusion users on where to find the updated Java versions, what JVM versions Adobe CF supports, and more.

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About the log4jshell pandemic, and what CF folks can do about it

Updated later Dec 14, 17, 21, 28, then Jan 11. See more below.

You can find lots of info in the CF and IT worlds about the log4jshell (or log4shell) "pandemic", since the news broke late Dec 9. If you have not found those yet, first here's a post I did on the Adobe CF portal yesterday with my thoughts (and a "mask" to consider, especially while we await a formal update, "the shot", from Adobe):

My lengthier post at the CF Portal: Dealing with the recent log4j vulnerability, before Adobe releases an update

I have more that I offered originally in this post here, on my carehart.org blog, but first I want to track recent updates and news since I first posted these two blog entries on the morning of Dec 14:

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I'll be presenting, "Hidden gems in CF2021, a year later", at Adobe CF Summit 2021

Just a heads up, for any who may be interested to hear: I will be one of the presenters at the upcoming Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2021 in December, being held again online this year.

Update: The session recordings were posted at the Adobe CF portal videos page, and the link to my talk is here: https://video.tv.adobe.com/v/339406.

My talk will be a reprisal and update of my traditional "hidden gems" talk, this one focused especially on things that have changed since the initial release of ColdFusion 2021 (and my talk at last year's Summit):

Hidden gems in CF2021, a year later

It's been a year since the release of CF 2021, and also since Charlie Arehart offered his "hidden gems" talk at last year's CF Summit. Perhaps you caught his talk then, or not, and maybe you've started using the release--or still have not. Either way, there've been a number of updates as well as some changes in features since the release. In this updated talk, Charlie helps both audiences consider aspects of ColdFusion 2021 that they may have missed.
Registration at the event is free, via the conference site, and the other couple of dozen sessions (in two tracks) are all listed there now. "See" you there. :-)

FusionReactor 8.7.4 released, now tracks JDBC time, etc. much more noticeably

FusionReactor version 8.7.4 was released recently (Oct 28. 2021), and while the release notes list several improvement (and a few bug fixes), I want to highlight in particular a couple of new features.

TLDR; The first improvement is one I've been looking forward to for years: the display of JDBC time spent and time spent calling out to remote services on the pages that list requests, like active/longest/slow requests. This will really speed up assessment of the reason of slowness in listed requests. See the screenshot below, and still more as well as another new feature.

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Return of AWS Lambda support in ColdFusion 2021 Update 2...well, kinda

Some folks may have heard or noticed that update 2 of CF2021 has returned "CF AWS Lambda" support. And while I was delighted to hear that news, my excitement dimmed when I saw what the "returned feature" was about. (As a reminder, the feature had been removed shortly after the initial release of CF2021, in news I shared then.)

TLDR; While the original CF AWS Lambda feature (removed shortly after the release) let you CREATE AWS Lambda/serverless packages written in CFML, the feature as "returned" to us now in update 2 only allows you to CALL AWS Lambda functions from within CFML. That's QUITE a difference.

And sure, there's value in being able to call AWS LAMBDAS in cfml, as I'll note. (And yes, it's already possible to execute cfml in AWS Lambdas in Lucee via Fuseless, as I also note later.) I just am really hopeful that at some later point the original capability will be returned.

Below, I share how I came to understand things..including more on what was possible before, what we were even teased by over the summer in the prerelease of CF2021 update 2, and then finally what the current capability allows.

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New updates released for Java 8 and 11 (and 17), Oct 2021

New JVM updates have been released yesterday (Oct 19, 2021) for the current long-term support (LTS) releases of Oracle Java, 8, 11, and 17. (Note that prior to Java 9, releases of Java were known technically as 1.x, to 8 is referred to in resources below as 1.8.) While the news has been announced by Oracle and shared in the IT press, I know that some of my readers don't necessarily follow those sources closely.

The new updates are 1.8.0_311, (aka 8u311), 11.0.13, and 17.0.1, respectively).

For more on them, including information on the security fixes and bug fixes they each contain, see the Oracle resources I list below, as well as some additional info I offer for if you may be skipping to this from a JVM update from before Apr 2021, as well as info for Adobe ColdFusion users on where to find the updated Java versions, what JVM versions Adobe CF supports, and more.

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Beware of ransomware attacks happening on ColdFusion 9 and earlier

If you're running CF9 or 8, beware: a recent spate of ransomware attacks have occurred, hitting such old CF servers that were not updated (in ways offered by Adobe in 2010!) This news has been reported in various security industry press, but I want to share here more that they generally did not.

TLDR; A most basic message to hear is "get off of CF9", or any version of CF that is no longer supported. But for the sake of those who wonder, "while I work on that, is my CF 9 really impacted?", I address that, and more. But again updating 9 to just "leave it at that" and get on with your life is NOT the main message to be hearing!

Of course, it's always risky to run old versions of software, and to be clear, CF9 was released in 2009 and CF8 in 2007. Sadly, some shops drag their feet to keep even such old software updated (they each got updates for 5 years after their release). But the problem is really coming home to roost for some.

Who's affected, and who's not? And what can you do, if still on CF9 or 8? And what more is known about the attack?

For more, read on. (BTW, yes I am aware that this is not "new info", as some were sharing it as much as 2 weeks ago. It simply took me time to gather up all the info below, to provide more specifics than those general interest articles were sharing.)

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Finding default/initial CF admin config (neo-*.xml) files, now at cfmlrepo.com

Have you ever wished to obtain a copy of one CF's neo-*.xml files (like neo-cron.xml), for the purpose of setting yours back to its defaults? Folks sometimes need to do that to recover from certain problems.

I've seen the problem raised often enough that when I saw someone raising it this weekend, I decided to solve it by creating a new folder in the cfmlrepo.com site, at least for CF2021 and CF2018 (for now), offering there the initial versions of all the neo-*.xml files for those two editions.

For more information, see what I shared (including more background on the issue, where I got the files, where I put the files, and more) in my reply about all this to the CF Community thread where the user raised the need this weekend.

And for the sake of those who may "just want the files" without any need of explanation or warnings:

I welcome thoughts, feedback, or suggestions.

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