Configuring IIS6 with Railo

April 7, 2008 · By Gert Franz · 45 Comments

Many times we have installed Railo on IIS. Here's a guideline on how to install Railo on Win2K3 with IIS6. You can also watch the video on how to install Railo and IIS6.The Video is found at the bottom of this page. It has been converted with the new tag <cfvideo> and is displayed with the new tag <cfvideoplayer>.

Download Railo and execute the setup executable file
Check if Railo runs correctly by calling http://localhost:8600/index.cfm you should see the following:
If Railo runs correctly IIS has to be configured. Go to Step 4.
If Railo does not start, or you don't see the above screen, please try the following:
- Check whether the service Railo 2.0 runs
- If the service runs, please check whether the firewall is blocking the server to run
- If the service does not run, please execute the following command in the {railo installation directory} C:\Program Files\Railo>httpd.exe -Xms512M -Xmx512M -conf conf/resin.conf -java_home jre -java_exe jre\bin\java Then the reason for Railo failing to start should be displayed
- If Railo still does not run function properly, it is time to write an email to railo railo_talk@yahoogroups.com
IIS and Resin need to mirror their configuration. So every host entry in the IIS (website) needs to reflect in the resin.conf found in the directory C:\Program Files\Railo\conf You might need to enter following lines inside the tag of the file: <host id="myweb.com"> <root-directory>d:/webroots/myweb.com</root-directory> <web-app id="/" document-directory="d:/webroots/myweb.com"/> </host>
or to make it much more comfortable: <host regexp="(.+)"> <host-name>${host.regexp[1]}</host-name> <root-directory>d:/webroots/${host.regexp[1]}</root-directory> <web-app id="/" document-directory="d:/webroots/${host.regexp[1]}"/> </host>
In the second case resin determines with the help of a regular expression where to locate a certain webroot. So you only need to create a directory named d:\webroots\hostname and the setting is valid without having to restart the application server service. But I wouldn't recommend this kind of definition, because it can grant access to webroots without manually allowing it.
Set up a new website according to your needs by using the according wizard.
If not already existent, create a folder named scripts inside a common directory (eg. D:\webroots\).
Copy the file C:\Program Files\Railo\Wind32\isapi_srun.dll into the created directory
Inside the IIS management console navigate to the Web Service Extensions
Click on Add new Web service extension
Add the dll as a named extension and set it's status to Allowed
Now your dll is a allowed extension you can use within the web site.
If you want to use Railo globally with every website you create, right click on websites and follow the instructions below.
- Click on "Web Sites" Properties
- Click on Home Directory/Configuration
- Add two Application Extension Mappings for .cfm and .cfc pointing to D:\webroots\scripts\isapi_srun.dll Please uncheck the Verify that file exists checkbox.
If you only want a certain webhost to act on .cfm and .cfc files with Railo, you need to execute the above actions for the respective Website.
Save the configuration of the IIS to disk, by selection All tasks/Save Configuration to disk in the context menu of the IIS server
restart the IIS service All tasks/Restart IIS... Now the website should run with Railo.
If you experience any issues with Railo, please follow the instructions on the following documentation page: http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.1/doc/install-iis.xtp

View count: 89872

Tags: Features · HowTo · Railo 2.0

45 responses so far ↓

1 Jeff // Apr 8, 2008 at 8:46 AM

When do we get to see Railo+Apache+windows!!!
2 Gert Franz // Apr 8, 2008 at 8:51 AM

Hi Jeff,

I guess I'll have to blogpost about that one as well :-)

OK. I'll do so in the next couple of days. Our Website is running under Windows+Apache+Resin+Railo. So it should be soon :-)

Gert
3 Mark // Apr 11, 2008 at 6:19 PM

Thank you for this! Most helpful Railo post I've seen yet. Keep up the great posts!
4 AJ Mercer // May 1, 2008 at 3:37 PM

Hi Gert,

Along with Apache set up, I would like to see how to set up Railo with multiple web sites.

Thx
5 JeffP // Aug 6, 2008 at 10:45 PM

I am trying to get Railo installed and running on my Linux VPS server.
I am having troubles.
I need someone to help me and will pay them!
If you can help, please contact me at:
http://trilakesdesign.com/contactus.cfm
6 Jeff Gladnick // Aug 6, 2008 at 10:51 PM

I am still waiting for some of the Coldfusion hosts to offer Railo VPS / Dedicated hosting?

Has anyone talked to viviotech yet? I use them for one of my VPS's and they are very good with support.
7 Mary Jo Sminkey // Aug 7, 2008 at 2:13 AM

Well, for a VPS or dedicated server, not sure why you can't just put Railo on there yourself? That's what I do, I have a customer on Railo at kickassvps.com, and may be adding another one soon. I just purchased a standard Windows VPS and installed Railo on it myself (okay, Gert helped me!)
8 Jeff Gladnick // Aug 7, 2008 at 2:17 AM

For hosting, I prefer not to have to deal with it. If there is anything more then a minor problem, I just ask my host to handle it. Configuring a linux+apache+mysql+railo/cf/etc server is not my expertise.

As for kickassVPS.com, how do you like the service there? How is their uptime?
9 Mary Jo Sminkey // Aug 7, 2008 at 6:27 AM

Well, it's something people should be emailing hosts about, if they are interested and looking around. If they never hear about it, and don't have any way to gauge the level of interest, they aren't as likely to consider it worth doing.

I've been happy with KAVPS so far, no real outages of note in the several months I've been with them, the server just hums along happily (as does Railo). I've mentioned to them that they should look into Railo hosting as an additional offering, but not sure if it's of interest to them or not.
10 Mary Jo Sminkey // Aug 7, 2008 at 6:31 AM

I will add as well, that this really is one area Railo shines. Yes, it'd be nice to get a server pre-configured with it. But once you've done one install, and know how to do it, it's not that bad. And updates are just so easy, the way they integrated them into the adminstrator. Click the link, it's done! Problem with the update? Just log onto your server and delete it. It's really pretty impressive how easy it is to update and rollback as well, so having a host that offers it really isn't all that big a deal.
11 Jordan // Aug 11, 2008 at 8:17 PM

Thanks Jeff for bringing this post to our attention. Vivio has announced it's intention to offer Railo hosting at the following URL: http://viviotech.net/hosting.cfm. Just click the "Coming Soon" link off to the left. We are also busily working on a site re-design. =)
12 Paul // Oct 9, 2008 at 12:29 AM

Really helpful. Following this I had no issues.
13 John // Dec 7, 2008 at 10:59 PM

Are there also instructions for IIS7 available?
14 Gert Franz // Dec 8, 2008 at 2:04 PM

No not yet. But there will be soon. I will blogpost about it.

Gert
15 Compu_guy // Jan 3, 2009 at 3:37 PM

I was wondering if anyone has sucessfully been able to connect Railo with IIS7 yet?
16 Jason Durham // Jan 3, 2009 at 8:00 PM

I've faught all day to make Railo 3.0 Community run on a Win2k3 box that already had IIS6 installed on it. It would be very helpful to have updated instructions. My machine is now hosed and I'm frantically looking for a way to remove Railo and get IIS working properly.
17 Brett // Jan 23, 2009 at 11:44 PM

With the latest download: ralio-3.0.1.000 the host entry needs to have the root directory set to "." rather than the document directory for it to work.
18 Matt // Mar 13, 2009 at 6:28 PM

following your instructions, i've been able to get coldfusion test files in the webroot to work properly, but loading sites deeper in has been a problem.

when i point my browser to for instance, http://localhost/site1/, it attempts to download the index.cfm file as opposed to executing it.

any clue as to where i'm screwing up the configuration?
19 Mike // Mar 23, 2009 at 12:59 AM

Hi,

I'm trying to set this up on my Vista 32bit machine with IIS7. I have it working on port 8600 but I can't seem to get it to work on port 80 with my CFM pages? This is what I have in my /railo/conf/resin.conf" file:


<host id="">

<web-app id="/">
<document-directory>C:/inetpub/wwwroot</document-directory>
</web-app>

<web-app id="/resin-admin" root-directory="${resin.home}/php/admin">

<prologue>
<resin:set var="resin_admin_password" value=""/>
<resin:set var="resin_admin_localhost" value="true"/>
</prologue>
</web-app>
</host>

<host id="foo.com">
<root-directory>C:/inetpub/wwwroot</root-directory>
<web-app id="/" document-directory="foo.com"/>
</host>

I've also added this domain in my host file as well. Every time I try to call:

http://foo.com/test.cfm

Which is my test script that prints the numbers 1 to 10 on the screen I get the following error in FireFox:

Connection Interrupted
The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
The network link was interrupted while negotiating a connection. Please try again.

But if I run the script from this URL:

http://foo.com:8600/test.cfm

Everything works fine. Am I doing something wrong in my setup? Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Mike
20 Adnan // May 4, 2009 at 3:38 PM

Well i need to know whether any one of you has tried to setup Railo on IIS5.1 (default IIS with XP).
I want to setup Railo on XP with IIS5.1.

Another question, this tutorial used Railo server, how can i achieve the same task with Railo Express. (developer edition)
21 M. Vaughan // May 11, 2009 at 9:14 AM

GERT: Sorry I accidentally deleted the comment. Here it is again. Sorry M.

I'm having the same problem as Mike...

When I go to http://foo.com/test.cfm, I will get connection interrupted errors, but when I go to http://foo.com:8600/test.cfm, everything seems to work fine... Also interesting is that in either case, if I type the name of a non-existant cfm page, I will see an error page from railo stating the file cannot be found.

Suggestions?
22 Gert Franz // May 11, 2009 at 9:17 AM

M.
You should first of all contact our Mailing list: railo@googlegroups.com. Second, we'll try to replay the installation with a Resin 3.1.9 version as well since there were some issues with Resin 3.1.x below version 3.1.7. But in this case the installation needs to be made manually. Please check the corresponding documentation here:
http://classic.railo.ch/en/index.cfm?treeID=215
Gert
23 jiaoyin // Jul 4, 2009 at 5:05 AM

how to setup more websites?
24 Anthony Katgert // Jul 18, 2009 at 12:47 PM

No Gert I did not have fun with your tutorial, it still does not work, how about offering a license per VPS per month of using and have everything in good working order instead of offering these beta products
25 Gert Franz // Jul 29, 2009 at 1:25 PM

Sorry Anthony that it didn't work as expected. The installation process is something straightforward. What's the issue? I would of course like to help if possible. Let me know...

Gert
26 Railo Community // Aug 2, 2009 at 11:07 PM

Actually Anthony made a few simple mistakes nothing major we the "Railo community" where able to help out now he is a Railo convert. You IIS guide is really good but It might be nice to see this updated to 3.1 ( even though it's almost identical )
27 Mike // Aug 23, 2009 at 3:39 PM

Thank you so much for this! I tried setting Railo up once in the past and got quickly discouraged. This tutorial really made it EASY. THANK YOU! I'm now using Railo and I love it.
28 Ennio Bozzetti // Oct 14, 2009 at 12:17 AM

I followed this tutorial and I was able to get Railo to work on IIS6 on windows 2003... they only problem I have is that the root folder is not what I declared on the website on resin.conf like this

<host id="sptctest.com"> <root-directory>d:/websites/sptc</root-directory> <web-app id="/" document-directory="d:/websites/sptc"/> </host>

is this wrong?
29 jbuda // Dec 3, 2009 at 12:04 PM

Is there a workaround for using port 80 in resin as opposed to 8600? Im getting the problem where i can see the website if i add the port into the url.

I have tried to change the default site in IIS6 to use a different port, but when i do and then try the website using Railo, i get a Bad Request error message.

Any help please!?
30 Paul Kukiel // Dec 3, 2009 at 3:54 PM

If you follow this guide Railo will be connected to IIS and will be running over port 80 and 8600. The idea is that you only expose port 80 from behind your firewall. But to answer your question yes after you complete these steps Railo will be running on port 80 with IIS.
31 Viktor Karpati // Apr 12, 2010 at 11:13 AM

Hi!
I have a strange problem. I am running VirtualBox with Windows 2003 Web Edition installed (it's my dev and test server). IIS6 + Resin + Railo works fine most of the time. All cfm webpages run correctly. However, when I try to reach http://www.mywebsite.com/railo-context, IIS throws a 404. Goodbye for form validation, cfimage, graphs, etc.
I can reach the administration panel only by adding port 8600 to the URL. Like http://www.mysite.com:8600/railo-context.
The problem seems to me, that IIS is trying to find the railo-context folder (which does not exist) before passing the request to Resin.
The funny thing is, that the some problem does not exist on my production server. There I can type http://www.mysite.com/railo-context, and it works. It is the same environment (Win2k3 + IIS + Resin + Railo).
Any idea?
32 Gert Franz // Apr 12, 2010 at 12:54 PM

Vicor,

Have you unchecked the "Verify that file exists" checkbox under Application/Configuration/mapping IIS setting? If you leave that checkbox checked, IIS will verify whether the file exists or not. And since it is only a mapping that only Railo will know about, you need to uncheck that box.

Gert
33 Martin // May 17, 2010 at 11:14 AM

This example DOES NOT work in real life. It simply does not work.
34 Gert Franz // May 17, 2010 at 2:27 PM

Martin,

I am sorry that the example does not work for you. What problems have you experienced? I install it always in the same way and I hardly have any problems. Can you give us a hint?

Gert
35 Francis // May 24, 2010 at 8:07 AM

Hi Gert,
Is that possible to have both ColdFusion 8 and Railo will work with IIS 6 in Windows XP? Currently I'm having all my ColdFusion 8 sites running under IIS and now i Installed Railo and i'm able to access both the Web and Server Administrator as "http://localhost:8600/railo-context/admin/web.cfm" . But all we want to do is just need to use IIS as a web server for Railo and ColdFusion 8 version. Let me know is that possible.
36 hammeronthenet // May 25, 2010 at 1:38 PM

The sample-site I've created seems to work ok, but now I've got two problems:
- I'm unable to reach the railo's admin panel... in any manner I try it didn't work!
- If I write as URL something like "http://site/appdirectory", the browser download me index.cfm in clear text. Obviously, if i write "http://site/appdirectory/index.cfm" all works fine.
I post my resin.conf file (sorry if it's a bit long):

<resin xmlns="http://caucho.com/ns/resin"
xmlns:resin="http://caucho.com/ns/resin/core">

<class-loader>
<tree-loader path="${resin.home}/ext-lib"/>
<tree-loader path="${resin.root}/ext-lib"/>
<tree-loader path="${resin.home}/lib"/>
<tree-loader path="${resin.root}/lib"/>
</class-loader>

<management path="${resin.root}/admin">
<user name="admin" password="password" disable="true"/>
<resin:if test="${resin.professional}">
<deploy-service/>
<jmx-service/>
<log-service/>
<xa-log-service/>
</resin:if>
</management>

<log name="" level="info" path="stdout:"
timestamp="[%H:%M:%S.%s] {%{thread}} "/>

<logger name="com.caucho" level="info"/>
<logger name="com.caucho.java" level="config"/>
<logger name="com.caucho.loader" level="config"/>

<dependency-check-interval>2s</dependency-check-interval>

<system-property mail.smtp.host="127.0.0.1"/>
<system-property mail.smtp.port="25"/>


<javac compiler="internal" args="-source 1.5"/>


<cluster id="app-tier">

<root-directory>.</root-directory>
<server-default>

<http address="*" port="8600"/>


<jvm-arg>-Xmx256m</jvm-arg>
<jvm-arg>-Xss1m</jvm-arg>
<jvm-arg>-Xdebug</jvm-arg>
<jvm-arg>-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote</jvm-arg>


<watchdog-jvm-arg>-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote</watchdog-jvm-arg>
<watchdog-port>6600</watchdog-port>

<memory-free-min>1M</memory-free-min>

<thread-max>256</thread-max>

<socket-timeout>65s</socket-timeout>

<keepalive-max>128</keepalive-max>
<keepalive-timeout>15s</keepalive-timeout>

</server-default>

<server id="" address="127.0.0.1" port="6800"/>

<resin:if test="${resin.professional}">
<persistent-store type="cluster">
<init path="session"/>
</persistent-store>
</resin:if>


<resin:if test="${resin.professional}">
<cache path="cache" memory-size="64M">

<rewrite-vary-as-private/>
</cache>
</resin:if>

<resin:if test="${resin.professional}">
<ping>

</ping>
</resin:if>

<web-app-default>
<prologue>

<class-loader>
<tree-loader path="${resin.root}/ext-webapp-lib"/>
</class-loader>

<allow-servlet-el/>
</prologue>

<cache-mapping url-pattern="/" expires="5s"/>
<cache-mapping url-pattern="*.gif" expires="60s"/>
<cache-mapping url-pattern="*.jpg" expires="60s"/>
<cache-mapping url-pattern="*.png" expires="60s"/>

<session-config>
<enable-url-rewriting>false</enable-url-rewriting>
</session-config>


<jsp>
<validate-taglib-schema>true</validate-taglib-schema>
<fast-jstl>true</fast-jstl>
</jsp>
</web-app-default>

<resin:import path="${resin.home}/conf/app-default.xml"/>


<host-default>

<access-log path="logs/access.log"
format='%h %l %u %t "%r" %s %b "%{Referer}i" "%{User-Agent}i"'
rollover-period="1W"/>

<web-app-deploy path="webapps"/>

<ear-deploy path="deploy">
<ear-default>
<ejb-server>
<config-directory>WEB-INF</config-directory>
</ejb-server>
</ear-default>
</ear-deploy>

<resource-deploy path="deploy"/>
</host-default>

<host-deploy path="hosts">
<host-default>
<resin:import path="host.xml" optional="true"/>
</host-default>
</host-deploy>

<host id="">

<web-app id="/">
<document-directory>C:/inetpub/wwwroot</document-directory>
</web-app>
<web-app id="/resin-admin" root-directory="${resin.home}/php/admin">

<prologue>
<resin:set var="resin_admin_external" value="false"/>
<resin:set var="resin_admin_insecure" value="true"/>
</prologue>
</web-app>
</host>
<host id="RailoTest">
<root-directory>C:/inetpub/wwwroot</root-directory>
<web-app id="/" document-directory="Railotest"/>
</host>
</cluster>

<resin:if test="${resin.professional}">
<cluster id="web-tier">
<server-default>

<http address="*" port="9080"/>
</server-default>
<server id="web-a" address="127.0.0.1" port="6700"/>
<cache path="cache" memory-size="64M"/>
<host id="">
<web-app id="/">
<rewrite-dispatch>
<load-balance regexp="" cluster="app-tier"/>
</rewrite-dispatch>
</web-app>
</host>
</cluster>
</resin:if>
</resin>
Where is the problem???
37 spills // Jun 11, 2010 at 12:26 AM

Any IIS7 "official" instructions for Railo yet? I would love to give it a try on a 2008 box but I am concerned that I don't have all the info needed for "proper" installation i.e. resource management, security, setting up new sites, working with an existing ACF product.
38 Gert Franz // Jun 11, 2010 at 10:46 AM

Sure,
just use the installers you find on projects.getrailo.org.
HTH
Gert
39 spills // Jun 12, 2010 at 10:50 PM

@Gert the inststallers @ projects.getrailo.org are in beta and I would prefer Resin and not Tomcat which the installers package.
40 Gert Franz // Jun 15, 2010 at 7:42 PM

Well it's more about hardening IIS afterwards, which is not a task that any installer should be responsible of. Anyway, if you don't want to check Google for it we are offering services like this on the commercial site. Let me know...

Gert
41 AL // Jul 23, 2010 at 5:09 PM

I m trying to get this to work... so far ok. I have a virtual win 2003 with iis6 and its sort of working.

When i access a site, for instance localhost.. it excutes the cfm index file but it redirects it to /railo-context/
42 Chris // Sep 29, 2010 at 9:37 AM

I got this working for the most part (Win2k3, IIS6). I can run "foo.com" fine but when I go to add a longer id like the ones below it dies.
foo.com is fine
bar.com is fine
foo.bar.com kills the whole thing and nothing works
(I just get "Server is currently unavailable or down for maintenance")

<host id="foo.com">
<web-app id="/" root-directory="d:/vhosts/foo.com"/>
</host>

<host id="bar.com">
<web-app id="/" root-directory="d:/vhosts/bar.com"/>
</host>

<host id="foo.bar.com">
<web-app id="/" root-directory="d:/vhosts/foo.bar.com"/>
</host>
Is there some way to turn on logging (to a file) in order to determine exactly what it's having an issue with?
43 Warner Robins GA // Nov 23, 2010 at 3:04 AM

Thanks for this tutorial!
44 Ks // Mar 10, 2011 at 11:08 PM

Looks like this tutorial is out of date with the latest Railo release. First it says to download and run setup.exe, so I assume that means the Tomcat version, next the isapi_srun.dll is nowhere to be found in any version I installed.
45 Gert // Mar 15, 2011 at 1:02 AM

Ks, the tutorial is referring to the Resin installer which was used up to version 3.2 as the default installer. In there a file named setup.exe was located, that is configuring the webserver with the connector (isapi_srun.dll).

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Configuring IIS6 with Railo

April 7, 2008 · By Gert Franz · 45 Comments

45 responses so far ↓

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