Adobe ColdFusion and Apache:
Limitations with Global Jrun Settings

By Shannon Eric Peevey, UNT Central Web Support

Background:

During the last month, we found an issue with setting the Adobe ColdFusion mod_jrun20 config container in the server config, or global, section of Apache2. 

Many people have probably run into the problem with using webDAV publishing in conjunction with a dynamic content engine, (ie PHP, ColdFusion, etc).  If you attempt to edit the file with a web publishing tool, (ie Dreamweaver), a GET is sent to the web server, which in turn sends the requested file through the PHP or ColdFusion engine, finally, returning the rendered HTML to the end-user. To deal with this problem, we have always run a vhost on port 8080 for publishing, with “ForceType plain/text” set.

In most instances, this would tell the web server to bypass the dynamic language engine and send the source code of the remote file to the web publishing tool instead.

Not today…

The Story:

We have just moved some ColdFusion developers over to the new servers, and they were having problems with their code being rendered whenever they were moving files back to their desktop.  This was odd, as none of our PHP developers were seeing this same issue.  After trying to fix this issue in an elegant manner, (continuing to load the mod_jrun20 config at the server config level), we decided to duct tape it by placing the config in a new directory off of the apache root:

/home/apache/ColdFusion/cfm.conf

And, including this file in each of the port 80 and port 443 vhost config files…

Now, why would this be happening…?  My obvious assumption is that the hook to mod_jrun20 is called before mod_mime, and, therefore, runs the file through the ColdFusion server before hitting “ForceType plain/text”...  Is this a feature, or a bug? 

Examples:

mod_jrun20 config:

</p>

# JRun Settings

<IfModule mod_jrun20.c>

JRunConfig Verbose false

JRunConfig Apialloc false

JRunConfig Ssl false

JRunConfig Ignoresuffixmap false

JRunConfig Serverstore /opt/jrun4/lib/wsconfig/1/jrunserver.store

JRunConfig Bootstrap 192.168.1.21:51020

#JRunConfig Errorurl <optionally redirect to this URL on errors>

AddHandler jrun-handler .cfm .cfml .cfc .jsp .jws

AddType application/x-httpd-cfm .cfm .cfml .cfc

</IfModule>

Links:

• “Loading Adobe ColdFusion globally in Apache and webDAV” http://speeves.unt.edu/newindex/?p=67

• “Apache Module mod_mime” http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_mime.html

• “JRun 4: Manually Configuring External Web Server Connectors” http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_18724