Raspberry Pi

Running ColdFusion (ACF or Lucee) on Raspberry Pi 5

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It’s been ages since I have had the time to tinker with any of my Raspberry Pis. In fact playing old games with my son using Retro Pi is probably 90% of the interaction in the last 3-4 years. Last week I was cleaning up some old “tech stuff” around my home office and came across my Raspberry Pi 5 unplugged and shelved. Barely an hour later I was running ColdFusion on it (of course by way of CommandBox).

I’m not going to go through all the details on how to get a Raspberry Pi up and running. There are plenty of videos and tutorials for that. What I’d like to
provide is a slight update to the 4 commands necessary to install CommandBox on the current OS – Raspbian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie). I found this in the Linux apt-get → Stable section of the CommandBox documentation. I added the comments.

    # 1. Downloads Ortus Solutions' repository GPG signing key,
    #    converts it to a trusted keyring format, and installs it
    #    so your system can verify packages from that repo are authentic.
    curl -fsSl https://downloads.ortussolutions.com/debs/gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/ortussolutions.gpg > /dev/null


    # 2. Adds the Ortus Solutions package repository to your system's
    #    APT software sources list.
    echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ortussolutions.gpg] https://downloads.ortussolutions.com/debs/noarch /" \
    | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/commandbox.list


    # 3. Refreshes the package index and installs CommandBox
    #    (plus HTTPS support for APT if needed).
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https commandbox

    # 4. Install Java
    sudo apt install default-jdk

Number 4 is really my only contribution here. The original command: sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk results in an error since
openjdk-11-jdk no longer exists in the main repository. The command I provided installs the default which at the time of this writing is
openjdk-21. Below you can see the output of the original command and the updated one.

Install Java
Install Java

Once CommandBox was installed I fired up an instance of Adobe ColdFusion 2025. Screenshot was taken using Raspberry Pi Connect screen sharing. As a side note I
showed server.os.additionalInformation for ACF since server.os.name reports as UNIX.

ACF ColdFusion on Raspberry Pi 5
ACF ColdFusion on Raspberry Pi 5

Also fired up an instance of Lucee 5. Screenshot taken again using Raspberry Pi Connect screen sharing.

Lucee ColdFusion on Raspberry Pi 5
Lucee ColdFusion on Raspberry Pi 5

I guess I’ve been away from the Raspberry Pi game for so long that I was pretty blown away by the new Raspberry Pi Connect remote-access service from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. This service lets you open and control your Raspberry Pi desktop from anywhere through a web browser — without port-forwarding, VPNs, or knowing your home IP address.

Also of note, the Raspberry Pi Imager is amazing. You can preconfigure settings such as WiFi network access, VNC, Hostname, and other settings as you create the image rather than digging around in config files or using raspi-config after the fact.

Helpful links and definitions of Raspberry Pi related hardware / software for the absolute beginner

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Raspberry Pi First Boot
Here is the first boot up of my Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is basically a $25 computer (Model A) or a $35 computer (Model B) meant to encourage children to learn programming by providing an affordable computing platform that can drive all kinds of projects from controlling robots to running a media center on a tv. I am not a hardcore programmer so I bought one to tinker and encourage my inner programming child.

I bought the Model B because it has 512MB Ram, 2 USB ports, and an ethernet port. The model A has 256MB Ram, 1 USB port, and no ethernet port.

So far I have managed three tasks.

  1. I have booted up with a copy of Raspbian “Wheezy”, surfed the internet and installed a mail client.
  2. I have booted up with a copy of Raspbmc, added some music, and took XBMC for a test drive.
  3. I have installed XBMC Commander to my iPhone and controlled my Raspbmc installation by playing music, videos, etc. I had varying degrees of success with this task.

Rather than copy other people’s fine tutorials I am going to provide definitions of the different technologies, as defined at their site(s). Below the definitions are link(s) to the site(s).

Raspberry Pi

What is (a) Raspberry Pi

“The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard.”

Raspberry Pi Site

Task 1: Raspbian

What is Raspbian

“Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi hardware.”

Wheezy is the recommended starting distro. There is also a link below to a distro that uses the MATE desktop environement instead of the LXDE desktop environment that “Wheezy” uses.

Raspbian “wheezy”

Bootable Raspbian “Pisces+MATE” Image by Mike Thompson

Task 2: Raspbmc

What is Raspbmc?

“Raspbmc is a minimal Linux distribution based on Debian that brings XBMC to your Raspberry Pi.”

Raspbmc Site

Task 3: XBMC / XBMC Commander

What is XBMC?

“A Complete media center solution for Windows, OSX, Linux, and more!”

XBMC Site

What is XBMC Commander?

“XBMC Commander is a remote control for the iPad especially designed to interact with XBMC, one of the most advanced open source media centers out there.” (There are iPhone and Adroid versions as well)

XBMC Commander Site