Coldfusion on Linux, Slow to Start

# check the name resolution of your hostname from the server

# if the IP address returned is wrong, its likely /etc/resolv.conf doesn't have a domain line
nslookup hostname

# startup could take as long as 568 seconds ~ 10 minutes (10 seconds is normal, 10 min is not)
service start coldfusion

# shutdown could take longer
service stop coldfusion

the reason is the coldfusion process runs inside of a jrun webapp service, which runs inside a java virtual machine

when the jrun process starts up it performs a JNDI query to find the hosts public IP address

if the resolv.conf does not have a domain directive, it will begin "guessing" the fully qualified name by appending any search directive suggestions, against all of the available nameservers

this can take a really long time, to "timeout" which will be logged in either


the jrun service will not quit trying until its exhausted all possibilities, and the coldfusion  webapp will not be loaded and started until jrun gives up, and any DNS server could return a false positive to direct the client to an error page

[QuickFix] put an entry in /etc/hosts for the IP address and hostname

[BetterFix] put a domain line in /etc/resolv.conf to fully resolve the FQDN of the host in DNS

[BestFix] make sure the FQDN is registered in a DNS server and is resolvable by the host