ColdFusion 9 silent install invokes GUI installer on Windows 8

Question

The ColdFusion 9 GUI installer doesn't work on Windows 8 (this is a known issue). To try to circumvent that, I've tried to use the "silent" installer, as detailed on the Adobe ColdFusion Blog: "Performing a silent installation of ColdFusion 9".

I have this installer.properties file:

INSTALLER_UI=SILENT
SILENT_LICENSE_MODE=developer
SILENT_INSTALLER_TYPE=jrun
SILENT_WEBROOT_FOLDER=C:\\apps\\adobe\\JRun\\4\\server\\cfusion\\cfusion-ear\\cfusion-war
SILENT_INSTALL_ODBC=true
SILENT_INSTALL_VERITY=false
SILENT_INSTALL_SOLR=true
SILENT_INSTALL_SAMPLES=true
SILENT_INSTALL_JNBRIDGE=true
SILENT_INSTALL_FOLDER=C:\\apps\\adobe\\JRun\\4
SILENT_SOLR_INSTALL_FOLDER=C:\\apps\\adobe\\ColdFusion\\9\\solr
SILENT_ADMIN_PASSWORD=123
SILENT_FLEX_ENABLED=false
SILENT_ENABLE_RDS=true
SILENT_RDS_PASSWORD=123

That all seems OK... I'm not happy about the way I have to second-guess the default installed ColdFusion instance path in the SILENT_WEBROOT_FOLDER value. But ultimately that would be where those files would go if I was using the GUI installer.

Anyway, I run the installer from the command-line (running as admin), thus:

ColdFusion_9_WWEJ_win64.exe -f installer.properties

This immediately kicks off the GUI installer, which promptly crashes due to it not being compatible with Windows 8.

My question boils down to:

1. is my installer.properties file correct. I'm presuming the instructions on the blog are correct, but Adobe to have a habit of not being very diligent with their documentation, so I'm not 100% sure of that;
2. why is the GUI installer still trying to run when doing a silent install;
3. is there any other way of getting ColdFusion 9 installed on Windows 8 (I suspect "no")?

I'm happy to provide any further info that might help.

Answer 1

Your installer.properties is correct. The GUI is launching because the system requirements are not met. The popup is the error window, due to the installer failure. As per current CF9 Support Matrix, ColdFusion 9 is not supported on Windows 8.

Answer 2

Yes, that silent install file looks like it should work - I doubt it makes a difference, but in the automated CF installs I have set up, the path to the silent install file is a full path including the drive.. but that's probably just me.

I'm not completely sure on whether the little installer window pops up when it's running silently.. I want to say that I remember it doing so when I was setting this up (all the automatic installs now happen in a system user session that I never see). I believe the window displays status but never prompts for user input.

Your only problem might be the lack of Windows 8 support, which is probably going to be very difficult to work around. You could try running the installer in compatibility mode for an earlier OS, but since Adobe announced support for CF10 on Win8 only if it's installed with a newer, updated version of the CF10 installer, it's unlikely that CF9 will ever install under Win8.

Answer 3

is there any other way of getting ColdFusion 9 installed on Windows 8 (I suspect "no")?

Actually, yes. Just got it to work using the 32-bit installer for CF9.0.2. Ideally we want 64-bit, but 32-bit should run fine as a dev environment.

Run it as admin in compatibility mode (ie right-click > Troubleshoot compatibility > Troubleshoot program > The program worked...etc > Win7 > Test Program > Save settings).

The installation ran fine, but the wsconfig tool refused to work with IIS8, so you have to add the handler mappings manually for *.cfm *.cfc etc. The DLL to map to is:

<cfroot>\runtime\lib\wsconfig\1\jrun_iis6_wildcard.dll

I had to copy the file from an existing installation (in fact I just copied the whole wsconfig directory).

There were various other IIS tweaks needed, the main one being to tell it to allow 32-bit Apps under App Pools > Set App Pool defaults.

Answer 4

I've decided to answer this myself, as I worked through the process myself without hacking anything or going "off piste" at any point.

@Anit answered two of my questions:

1) is my installer.properties file correct. I'm presuming the instructions on the blog are correct, but Adobe to have a habit of not being very diligent with their documentation, so I'm not 100% sure of that;

Yes, it was correct.

2) why is the GUI installer still trying to run when doing a silent install;

It boils down to ColdFusion being stupid, basically. It doesn't understand what the "silent" in "silent install" means. Well OK, that's not what Anit said, but I have distilled his answer down to that.

There is the third question:

3) is there any other way of getting ColdFusion 9 installed on Windows 8 (I suspect "no")?

Julian (cfSimplicity) gave an answer to this, and I have no doubt it works, but it's not quite what I wanted.

It boils down to what I detail on my blog: "ColdFusion 9 on Windows 8":

1. Create a .war file on another machine, not running Windows 8
2. Run ColdFusion via Tomcat on the Win8 machine, deploying the .war file

Job done.