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“The administrator module is not installed” after manual ColdFusion update

July 19, 2023

After manually applying an update to one of the ColdFusion servers I manage I started getting this error when opening the ColdFusion Administrator console:

The administrator module is not installed.
You can install module through CLI package manager(CF_ROOT/bin/cfpm.bat) by running the command : install administrator.

Executing the suggested command showed what appeared to be a successful install, but still received the same error.

I reviewed the ColdFusion update log {cfusion}\hf-updates\hf-XXXX-XXXXX-XXXXXX and found several module installs failed with this error:

An error has occurred while installing the package XXXXX. Exception : URI does not specify a valid host name: {Local Path To File}.jar

An old manual upgrade path was left in the packagesurl value within {cfusion}\lib\neo_updates.xml.

I was able to restore my pre-update snapshot backup, change neo_updates.xml back to the original value of https://www.adobe.com/go/coldfusion-packages and proceed with the manual update normally.

If the packagesurl value contains invalid/unescaped characters, you might also see this error in the update log:

Exception : Illegal character in opaque part at index X