[FDS-24] Can I use FusionDebug with a MultiServer configuration?

FusionDebug can be used with a MultiServer configuration.

Since version 7 the ColdFusion Setup allows you to install ColdFusion as a SingleServer or MultiServer edition. The latter allows you to run multiple cfusion servers. Per default all these servers share the same JVM configuration (jvm.config) which will let you run into problems when you have added the debugging configuration parameters required by FusionDebug. As a result you will be able to run only one server at once. When you try to start another server it fails and you will see a message like the following in the logs:

09/22 14:27:32 error Exception thrown in operation start
[1]java.net.BindException: Port in use by another service or process: 8000
   at jrun.servlet.network.NetworkService.bindToSocket(NetworkService.java:337)
   at jrun.servlet.network.NetworkService.start(NetworkService.java:198)
   at jrun.servlet.http.WebService.start(WebService.java:73)
   ...

If you only temporarily add the FusionDebug configuration to jvm.config this might be not a problem for you. Just remove it once you finished debugging.

A better approach would be to use multiple jvm.config files – each one dedicated to one server. Adobe has published a technote that explains in detail how to do this.

On Windows platforms, if you add a new CFusion instance using the Enterprise Manager->Instance Manager page in the ColdFusion Administrator, the default settings will NOT create a dedicated windows service and therefor the newly created instance will use the same jvm.config file as the cfusion instance. When you try to debug this new instance with FusionDebug it will connect to the port already used by the cfusion instance – but the files you want to debug are served by the newly created instance, e.g. debugging will not work.