Server Locks up... Tracking down cause.

[JonnyWeb.com]

One of our servers It is running CF 4.5, and has about 50 websites. All of
which are very old and very poorly written. I know how to fix the problems that
cause the crashes. I can even duplicate the case in which I know are causing
the errors. I just can't put my finger on which pages the bad code is on.

When I recreate the problems and test them, the cf log files never log the
error location. IIS does not register it as a loaded page so there is no record
their either.

We monitor our servers very well and so we know WHEN the errors are occurring,
we just need to find WHERE.

How can we find the pages with the bad code?

[moneybagsxp]

Is the "bad code" tied to a database in anyway? Or it is specific CF code that
is bogging down your server? It is unfortunate that you haven't been able to
track down the source. I trust it would be too time-consuming to do a per-page
analysis to attempt manually seeking out the error?

[JonnyWeb.com]

One of the crash senerios is when a text string is inserted into a integer
field.

The other is when application variables are not locked when being writen to
(for this one I have done some page by page searching and correcting but it is
a little bit unrealistic to do it to anything but the application.cfm files).

[PaulH]

well your 1st case shouldn't crash the server, just that page/app. your 2nd
case is more serious for that version of cf. i don't recall the details of
cf4.5 but is there an admin setting to single thread? that might buy you some
time while you figure out what to do next.

if possible, i'd suggest upgrading cf (then unlocked writes would be a race
condition issue). if not, then no choice but search & replace (wrapping those
reads & writes in cflock).

[JonnyWeb.com]

The code below will crash my server running CF 4.5. The first thread lock
makes the processor jump to 50% the second jumps to 100% and then crash it
goes. I am surprised how many people don't know that.

The fields are both date fields.




<cfset form.BeginningDate="a">
<cfset form.EndingDate="a">
<CFINSERT datasource="Shared_Events_calendar"
TABLENAME="Events"
formfields="BeginningDate,EndingDate">

[JonnyWeb.com]

About a week ago I made that change in the cf admin. It helped some and my
tests showed it much more diffacult to crash the server. In fact I couldn't do
it using session variables. I think that it could be done with application
variables but didn't have the time to test that.

Thanks for the suggestion PaulH.

[PaulH]

that code crashes your server? i admit its been a long long while but i don't
recall something that trivial dropping the server--though we've never used
cfinsert, etc.

i vaguely recall there being cf4.5.1 and a service pack or two for that. did
you get those installed/

[JonnyWeb.com]

Yes as noted below.

Server Information

Server Product: ColdFusion Server
Version: 4, 5, 1, SP2
Edition: Enterprise
Operating System: Windows NT
OS Version: 5.0, Service Pack 4
OS Build Number: 2195