nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Why Doesn't Jira and Confluence SMTP set ups work?

Jonathan Kerr1

First off I just want to say that I love what both of these can do, no issues there. However I've had Jira and Confluence for over a week, and while I can get other people into Confluence without outgoing mail, I cannot with Jira. I host both on my local computer. Confluence Installed easily and saw my database right away. Jira did not. Jira flat out refused to connect to my database (PostgreSQL) on the grounds that it wasn't an empty database (which it was) so its using the built in database for the time being (temporary). I have been trying to get the SMTP setup so I can get users into Jira and have email notifications for a week. I have spent almost all day the last 2 days doing nothing else. Trying to get this to work is making me literally sick to my stomach every time I thinnk about it. I have a starter liscense for both and was under the impression that they are partly so schools can get it for cheap. I highly doubt many teachers can setup this as I've found way more articles and threads on this very issue from peole way more experienced then me (Im not very experienced at all). I have followed every step in every guide and still nothing, absolutely nothing but stomach aches and errors. Most recent was a timeout error that could not be done away with by simply altering the Timeout field during the outgoing mail setup screen. I'm also running windows Vista.

Real simple all I want is to invites people to Jira and get notifications to them, thats it. This is not something that should take a week to do. I should also not be finding so many with same problem streaching across multiple versions of this. This needs to be fixed and made simple. It should simply work out of the box so to speak.

Rant over, long story not short...can someone, anyone please point me in the direction of something somewhere that gets this fixed. I'm not an accomplished IT guy and find most of the instructions trying to help lacking. It feels like IT guys helping IT guys. I need a solution, an article, something for the brain dead and helpless like me to actually get this to work.

Please.

EDIT: I am so close to uninstalling and being a spoiled kid and asking for a refund. I have never had any software ever be this difficult to set up and use. I have never had so many things attempted end in errors. Jira won't see confluence in setting up a User Server it tells me that just my straight IP is fine, however the User directory that wants to refer to it says that its not. Nothing works. Nothing is getting set up at all. All me and my team can do is create basic pages in Confluence (they get error messages for anything other then blog and forums posts and blank page creation, I can make everything fin). Email doesnt work, nothing. I'm sorry but I bought these pieces of software to increase data and team management and productivity and so far I have wasted entire days with no outcome or solution trying to get things to work. Sorry for ranting and the wall of text but I am at the end of my rope with this software, my team hates since it doesn't work for them other then the most basic of features, and Im beginning to hate it because it has completely derail my work trying to set it up and I am now 3 day behind where I should be. This is unacceptable, for a productivity suite.

UPDATE: Confluence, through some miracle of nature, now decided to play ball and work. I can now send out mail, woot! I literally did nothing new, I mustve edited that server.xml file like seven times with the same info, always timed out before.

NEW PROBLEM: While Confluence is now fine, Jira won't launch at all. I followed all the steps to put the gmail smtp info into the server.xml file so on as detailed by a hundred articles. The problem is that the Jira windows service does't start or run at all now. When I try to force through task manager I get an access is denied. Hard to see if Jira now can do email when the service won't even start or run. Any body have any clues?

UPDATE2: Got Jira service back, still no email, brand new error, as follows

An error has occurred with sending the test email:
com.atlassian.mail.MailException: javax.naming.NameNotFoundException: Name [JiraMailServer] is not bound in this Context. Unable to find [JiraMailServer].
at com.atlassian.mail.server.impl.SMTPMailServerImpl.sendWithMessageId(SMTPMailServerImpl.java:197)
at com.atlassian.mail.server.impl.SMTPMailServerImpl.send(SMTPMailServerImpl.java:149)
at com.atlassian.jira.plugins.mail.webwork.SendTestMail.doExecute(SendTestMail.java:107)
at webwork.action.ActionSupport.execute(ActionSupport.java:165)
at com.atlassian.jira.action.JiraActionSupport.execute(JiraActionSupport.java:87)
at webwork.interceptor.DefaultInterceptorChain.proceed(DefaultInterceptorChain.java:39)
at webwork.interceptor.NestedInterceptorChain.proceed(NestedInterceptorChain.java:31)
at webwork.interceptor.ChainedInterceptor.intercept(ChainedInterceptor.java:16)
at webwork.interceptor.DefaultInterceptorChain.proceed(DefaultInterceptorChain.java:35)
at webwork.dispatcher.GenericDispatcher.executeAction(GenericDispatcher.java:225)
at webwork.dispatcher.GenericDispatcher.executeAction(GenericDispatcher.java:154)
at com.atlassian.jira.web.dispatcher.JiraWebworkActionDispatcher.service(JiraWebworkActionDispatcher.java:152)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
at com.atlassian.jira.web.filters.steps.ChainedFilterStepRunner.doFilter(ChainedFilterStepRunner.java:87)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:243)

log continues for a while, any ideas, I feel closer to fixing this then ever

Accepted answers

All comments

unknown

Hey Jonathan,

Installation:

Jira flat out refused to connect to my database (PostgreSQL) on the grounds that it wasn't an empty database (which it was)

No it wasn't, honest. You would have had a previous install fail, some tables were created, generating the above, to fix, drop the database and recreate. It will work, I do this frequently!

If you have this many problems, Im going to guess that you are installing all of this on one machine, andy my question is then, how much memory do you have? If you're trying to run JIRA and Confluence and the database on a 4gb max PC it should run to start with, maybe problems later.

If you can launch Confluence but then not get JIRA to install, try stopping Confluence, then starting with JIRA to ensure resources are available. The outcome should inform the problem.

Connectivity:

I do this on daily basis - it will work! Prove you have valid mail server details, you didnt say whether POP or IMAP is involved, or what your mail server is? If you are setting up a system there is an expectation you can validate your local environment, so prove your mailserver is valid, setup a mail client to confirm you can connect, eg Mozilla Thunderbird, it works with POP/IMAP.

Once you know your credentials are good, progress to JIRA. offering some information about the outcome of 'verifying connectivity' during edit of the SMTP server, and 'send test email' after would help inform more targetted answers.

Riada

Hi Jonathan,

I agree with Andy on this one.

We have set up tons of mail configurations for the Atlassian products without any problems.
I just want to point out that you can reach out to Atlassian Support, they are pretty fast in responding. You can also turn to one of us Experts that for sure will help you with anything you need regarding Atlassian.

Both of the above will be interested in your outgoing mail log and the jira log to start with.

Another thing, you said Windows Vista.
Are you setting up some kind of test environment? I guess you don't run Vista on a production server aimed to host Atlassian products. A tip is to set up your test environment in Atlassian OnDemand instead, you will be up and running in minutes instead of struggeling several days with a mail problem. I am certain that the mail problem will not be a problem if you request help from the above mentioned parties.

Jonathan Kerr1

With my database I had literally just installed it, had done nothing to it before following the steps to set it up. I did not have Confluence installed or setup yet when I tried to connect Jira to the database. I have had to setup a Jira installation before for a friend using PostgreSQL as the database (and his setup was similar to mine) and it worked fine, and I had had no issues with the mail setup either that time. That was my only previous experience with Jira.

With my mail server I am mainly just interested in outgoing at the moment seeing how Jira won't allow me to invite my users without it. I am using a gmail account for this that I've setup specifically for it. I have both my gmail accounts and my live account setup just fine with my Outlook client, no issues at all there. I was having lots of different issues with mail, but now the only issue I get with both Jira and Confluence with both incomming and outgoing is a time out issue. I have tried many things to fix this, including increasing the timeout exception in both Jira and Confluence (up to 60s before timeout in Jira) I understand that these were not made for hosting on a home computer, however it should not be impossible.

I'm fine hardware wise hosting, I know my OS is old, but I update my compentents regularly. I have over 6GB of memory atm and am getting more here soon (mail is slow). However my hosting is not a serious long term plan, but my team is small, and we are just starting out so paying a monthly fee is out of the question. Hosting myself is just the best solution for us at the moment.

Jonathan Kerr1

dedicated, I would never try to do something like this over wifi.

I will try the standalone email client (my standalone outlook is old, may need something fresher)

And from a past of playing resource heavy games I've developed a habit of closing out unimportant applications to free up resources (if Im not playing a steam game steam doesnt need to be up, etc...)

unknown

K, this looks to be more of an infrastructure issue than a software fault (so we can't help, just point in the rigth direction). Use a standalone client, see how long _it_ takes to pull mail, I'd think it will be similar, are you on wifi or dedicated lan?

Scott Dudley [Inactive]

Johnathan,

There is a critical bug in the latest version of Confluence 5.4.2 (CONF-32397) that impacts the OAuth plugin. I haven't dived into this bug in detail, but it seems probable that Atlassian uses some combination of Trusted Applications and/or OAuth to handle the JIRA/Confluence user directory authentication, which could be responsible for the failure you mentioned in the original post.

You could try Confluence 5.4.1, or else 5.4.3 when it comes out (presumably soon) to see if that works any better for you.

Scott

Jonathan Kerr1

excellent Ill look forward to that update, thanks for telling me about that bug!

Jonathan Kerr1

New Problem Now: While Confluence is now fine, Jira won't launch at all. I followed all the steps to put the gmail smtp info into the server.xml file so on as detailed by a hundred articles. The problem is that the Jira windows service does't start or run at all now. When I try to force through task manager I get an access is denied. Hard to see if Jira now can do email when the service won't even start or run. Any body have any clues?

Riada

How much RAM do you have on your PC?
What does your JIRA log tell you?
How about ports, ensure that the TCP port that JIRA uses is unallocated.

Jonathan Kerr1

HOLY COW ITS WORKING!!! I was finally able to do it. Fixed Jira service not starting because for some reason the path to JAVA_HOME changed to pointing at an old version, fixed. Fixed it not finding JiraMailServer by fixing it under Resource > name (derp) and now finally all is well at the moment.

I want to thank everyone who helped me out. You all were very nice and profession, definately a nice change of pace from troubleshooting games (Steam Forums, ugh). Thank all of you so much! I may still be unhappy about how long it all took, but I am more then pleased at how nice and straight everyone was with me. Definately a selling point, will be telling all who can hear. It's fixed and you guys were great.

P.S. Thanks for not calling me out on my immature ranting.

Tommy Nordahl

Good to hear that it works.
Just reach out to the Atlassian eco-system and we will do our best to support you. :-)

unknown

Gald to hear you're up and running!

Welcome!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Quick Links

Find more posts tagged with

confluence

jira

notification

invite

smtp