Here in the states most of us ritualistically change our clocks twice a year in hopes to gain more daylight. This practice has been known as Daylight Savings Time and it’s my understanding that it’s also practiced in other parts of the world. Well the US Government recently changed the dates for when Daylight Savings Time would start and end. This caused in some places a y2k like panic and people feared that their software would all of the sudden start reporting the wrong time for lunch breaks. So much like y2k, software makers started issuing patches for their software and operating systems to account for these changes.
For those of you running your own ColdFusion server you’ll need to take note here because there are things you need to do, in order to be ready for next weekend sine the 2nd weekend in March is when the changes take effect.
For ColdFusion to be “fixed” you need to actually update the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which ColdFusion uses to process your code. According to Adobe’s web site the SUN JVM Version 1.4.2_11 fixes the Daylight Savings time issues and is certified for CFMX 7.02, CFMX 6.1 Updater 1 and JRun 4 Updater 6 (for those not running in standalone).
Now grabbing the proper JVM is a bit tricky. Sure you could just head over to SUN’s java site and grab the latest version but these newer versions haven’t been certified by Adobe to work with the current version of CF which could mean nothing, or it could me some wonky acting web sites for sure!
Here are the steps I took in order to get the SUN JVM 1.4.2_11
- Visit http://java.sun.com/products/archive/index.html
- Scroll down the page until you see the following in bold J2SDK/J2RE – 1.4
- To right of this you’ll see a drop down selector with the word Go next to it. Click this drop down selector and select the “1.4.2_11” version and click on the Go button
- On the next screen you need to select either the j2SDK 1.4.2_11 or the J2RE 1.4.2_11. I choose the j2SDK just so I knew I had everything :).
- The next screen should be the download screen. Before you can download though you’ll need to select the radio button next to the “Accept License Agreement” text above the table with all the versions
- Once you’ve accepted the license agreement the page will refresh and you can select the version for your OS. If you have multiple servers running different OS versions you might want to put a check into each box next to the version you need and then click on the link to “Download selected with Sun Download Manager”. For those running Windows 32 bit I suggest grabbing the “Offline Installation”. It’s a bit beefier but you won’t have to worry about the installer trying to download the parts it needs etc.
Once you’ve got it downloaded you’ll need to install it on the same computer where ColdFusion is running. The installer is easy just double click on the installer file and follow the prompts. When asked where you want to put the files I recommend placing them in the root of drive ie C: or d: to keep the path names as short as possible. And also when it asks which browsers it should register with you can leave those already selected if you don’t have a JRE already installed. Most machines will have a version already installed so in this case you’ll want to uncheck the browsers you use to avoid any possible conflicts.
Once the J2SDK / JRE has been installed you’ll need to upgrade the JVM shipped with ColdFusion to use the 1.4.2_11 version. You can do this by following the steps outlined in Adobe Technote 2d547983.
If you’re running standalone this is a super easy step that just involves you logging into the ColdFusion administrator and making a simple change.
Be sure to restart ColdFusion so that all the changes take effect.
If you want to read more about this issue check out this search from the weblogs.Macromedia.com MXNA aggregator.
Eric Jones
