java.io.IOException

i am using the following

<cfexecute name="...\somthing.exe"></cfexecute>

and getting an error

An exception occurred when invoking an external process.
The cause of this exception was that: java.io.IOException: CreateProcess: \...\something.exe error=3.

ColdFusion cannot determine the line of the template that caused this error. This is often caused by an error in the exception handling subsystem.

does anyone have any idea?

First guess is that either cfexecute is disabled (as it almost always is on shared hosts), or that the account that ColdFusion is running under does not have permission to execute the target file.

thanks kiteless,
but how do i make sure that it's not disabled? we use cf mx 6. i went thru cf admin and couldn't find anything. thanks for the help,...

If you control the server then it is probably not disabled (it is a CF administrator setting). In that case I'd consider the permissions issue.

It could also be related to 6.0. You've probably heard this a million times but it bears repeating: CF 6.0 sucks. It was horrible. It should never have been released. 6.1 is like a whole new product compared to 6.0, there were so many enhancements and bug fixes that it isn't even funny. And the upgrade is FREE. You should consider doing this immediately.

hmm, i just did a rightclick on the file to see the permissions and it says to everyone. by the way, the CF is 6.1. my mistake...

Actually I just noticed, this is the problem I think:

<cfexecute name="...\somthing.exe"></cfexecute>

You can't do "..\something.exe"....cfexecute runs at the command line so if you need to move to a specific directory, run a batch file with commands like

cd c:\
cd temp
something.exe

in other words you have to run it exactly as if you were at the command line.

o crappy. i just did pcanywhere and got it 'partially' work.
my next question is how to invoke an application.
i used <cfexecute name="...\something.exe"></cfexecute>
what i expected is to launch an application. but it didn't happen. just like you go C:\winnt\system32\ and click on calc it will launch the calculator application. is there a way to accomplish this?

Well first, what good would that do, it would be running on the server not on the client. But second, I believe cfexecute just kicks off processes and batch files, I don't think it will actually run applications on the server.

In other words, if you are trying to run an application on the CLIENT'S computer, no, there is no way to do this unless you go to ActiveX controls or Java applets.

According to my ColdFusion book, "cfexecute enables you to execute processes on the ColdFusion server machine." The example has name="c:\utility\program.exe"

I've used this command once to run an exe file that unencoded a key into a game score.

this will be for internal use only. there is an application, a web archiving tool, that will be used by the QA. I thought i could put the application on the serverA and every QA member would use a cf page to launch the application. so, i have to write a java applet?

I'm still not clear on what you actually want. Do you want this QA appliction to run on the USER'S computer, or on the ColdFusion server?

If you want it to run on the user's computer there is no way to do this other than ActiveX or Java (anything else would be a gigantic security vulnerability).

thanks Kiteless,
it will be running on the server.

Then cfexecute would run it (if it can be run from the command line). But in that case, no one else would be able to use it unless they were sitting at the server's console or using remote desktop to the server. And at that point you wouldn't need to run it via CF anyway, the user would just run it the same way they would run any other desktop application.

Has any of this answered your question? If you're still not sure, maybe you could explain further exactly what you're trying to do?

We use cfexecute fairly often to fire off batch files, execute ANT scripts, etc., and it works well for this.