Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Installing Contribute Publishing Services on Windows Server 2008

We use Adobe Contribute to edit/manage our web site at work. We’re also steadily moving to Windows Server 2008. I was thus a bit disappointed to see that when I tried to install CPS on Windows Server 2008, it just sat there – trying to install, but in fact doing nothing at all. Being a) stubborn and b) probably stupid (let’s face it, Contribute is dead), I was able to bring it up by copying an existing installation from Windows Server 2003 and then registering the services appropriately. Here’s what I did (your paths and server names will vary). In this example, WEBSTAGE is the old Windows Server 2003 box and WEBSTAGE08 is the new Windows Server 2008 box.

  1. Copied C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Contribute Publishing Services from WEBSTAGE to WEBSTAGE08.
  2. From the Command Prompt, created the CPS service (note space after “binPath=” – important and annoying to miss)
    sc.exe create CPS binPath= ”C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Contribute Publishing Services\jrun4\bin\jrunsvc.exe”
  3. Exported HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\Macromedia Contribute Publishing Server from WEBSTAGE to CPS1.reg.
  4. Exported HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CPS from WEBSTAGE to CPS2.reg.
  5. Edited CPS2.reg and removed the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CPS\Security and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CPS\Enum sections.
  6. Imported CPS1.reg and CPS2.reg on WEBSTAGE08.
  7. Started the Macromedia Contribute Publishing Server service on WEBSTAGE08.
  8. Added firewall exception to allow access to all ports opened by C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Contribute Publishing Services\jrun4\bin\jrun.exe.
  9. Opened https://webstage08:8900/contribute/admin/server.cfm.
  10. Logged in with old admin password and changed to new admin password.
  11. Switched to Website Settings panel and deleted webstage website.
  12. Launched Contribute CS3, created a new connection to WEBSTAGE08 and added https://webstage08:8900/contribute as the publishing server.

That’s it. Can’t believe it worked, really.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Andy-
I'm guessing you meant that you removed the Security and Enum sections from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CPS\ since that is what you exported to CPS2.reg instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\CPS

Andy said...

@conanbarb Yes, that's correct - copy & paste error..

The Ogre said...

I followed these directions and the registry key imported perfectly as well as the bin creation, however, when I go to start the service, I get the error that "Windows could not start the CPS on..."

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

There is a much simpler prcesses. Run the installer in compatibility mode. Works great.

See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/581623

Cheers,

--Abby