Ensuring persitence of cofig file changes through updates.

Question

Hi folks,

we've been discussing the update for Confluence server and I was wondering how your experiences as a community are.

We made some changes to the config files (https-connector etc.) and we're not entirely (read: not at all) sure about the persitance of these changes through an update.

How do you ensure that your customizations survive the update?

My initial impulse would be to copy the snippets for the connector and reinsert them into the new config files.

So long,

Alex

Steven F Behnke · Answer

I don't mean to be severe, most of the time there are little or no changes. However, it would be unwise to advise anyone copy+paste these configs for several reasons.

During our upgrade from Confluence 5.x to Confluence 6.x, we had to completely rework our proxy server and the ssl termination. Our previous configuration was almost completely discarded. This was mostly because our previous configuration made configuring Synchrony very difficult.

unknown · Answer

Hi Steven,

thanks for the feedback!

I did understand and document the changes I made to the server.xml. What I can't lock down exactly is the amount of work in the context of an update.

From you post I understand that the config files are indeed overwritten and I need to implement the customizations into the new files.

This gives me a whole different timeframe for everything!

It will be important to read up on the correct ways to implement "our" customizations in the new version, prepare the code and insert it after the update to minimize downtime.

Thanks again!

Alex

Steven F Behnke · Answer

You can't preserve them like that.

These products are deployed with Tomcat being considered part of the Application. Furthermore, the version of Tomcat that Confluence is developed against and deployed with changes for some versions of Confluence. Even now in Confluence 6, there is now a Tomcat container and a Jetty container (for Synchrony). These, the application code, and the database make up the application.

When you modify, for instance, the server.xml file, you're customizing the application. You should not preserve the entire file via a script or managed system. You should not directly copy+paste snippets of config files during upgrades.

What you should do is understand and document what attributes and configurations you're changing. You're customizing Tomcat or Jetty or whatever. When Confluence is upgraded, check the Confluence documentation for the version you're on, check the Tomcat/Jetty documentation for the version Confluence is using, and customize the product to add HTTPS or a proxy or whatever.