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; } } }

Confluence suddenly stopped working

Roget Luo

Confluence hosted on Windows 2012 VM, stopped working recently, getting Apache Tomcat/7.047 Error report, "HTTP Status 500-java.lang.NullPointerException" when trying to pull up the dashboard URL.

On the hosting VM, Apache Tomcat 6.0 shows in Services.msc and it's running. Atlassian Conflence is up and running as well. Browsed to the Confluence\bin folder, tried to run tomcat7w, got "The specified service does not exists as an install service. Unable to open service tomcat7".

No experience in Apache or Confluence, any help is greatly appreciated.

Accepted answers

All comments

AnnWorley

Hi Roget,

Please try:

Shut down the Confluence service in services.msc. There should not be a second service for Tomcat for Confluence so unless the Tomcat service is a known application please shut it down, too.
Start Confluence by running the start-confluence.bat file in the <confluence_install>/bin folder at an elevated command prompt (This will open a command window with startup messages, if you close it, Confluence will shut down)
Try accessing Confluence in the browser
If all is well in the browser, use <confluence_install>/bin/stop-confluence.bat to shut Confluence down
Start the Confluence service and see if the error appears in the browswer
If the error appears with the service and not the manual start-up then reinstall the service as described in Start Confluence Automatically on Windows as a Service - the instructions for removing the old service first are at the bottom of the page.

Since you are using Tomcat 7, I assume you are using an older version of Confluence as Confluence uses Tomcat 8 now.

If you still see an error after starting Confluence manually with the .bat file please let us know the error, what version of Confluence you are running and any relevant looking entries in:
<confluence_install>/logs/ (anything recent in this directory) and <confluence_home>/logs/atlassian-confluence.log.
(note) The <confluence_home> directory is the path defined in the following file: <confluence_install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties

Thanks,

Ann

Roget Luo

Hi Ann,

Thank you for the reply. Followed steps 1 & 2 but still pulling up the java.lang.NullPointerException when trying to pull up the web page, with the following

message java.lang.NullPointerException

description The server encountered an internal error that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference$InitializationException: java.lang.NullPointerException
 com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.getInterruptibly(LazyReference.java:149)
 com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.get(LazyReference.java:112)
 com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceEncodingFilter.getGlobalSettings(ConfluenceEncodingFilter.java:47)
 com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceEncodingFilter.getEncodingInternal(ConfluenceEncodingFilter.java:37)
 com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceEncodingFilter.getEncoding(ConfluenceEncodingFilter.java:29)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.encoding.AbstractEncodingFilter.doFilter(AbstractEncodingFilter.java:38)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.AbstractHttpFilter.doFilter(AbstractHttpFilter.java:31)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.HeaderSanitisingFilter.doFilter(HeaderSanitisingFilter.java:44)
 com.atlassian.confluence.servlet.FourOhFourErrorLoggingFilter.doFilter(FourOhFourErrorLoggingFilter.java:65)
 com.atlassian.confluence.web.filter.DebugFilter.doFilter(DebugFilter.java:50)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.AbstractHttpFilter.doFilter(AbstractHttpFilter.java:31)

root cause

java.lang.NullPointerException
 com.atlassian.spring.container.ContainerManager.getComponent(ContainerManager.java:33)
 com.atlassian.confluence.util.LazyComponentReference$Accessor.get(LazyComponentReference.java:46)
 com.atlassian.util.concurrent.Lazy$Strong.create(Lazy.java:85)
 com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference$Sync.run(LazyReference.java:321)
 com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.getInterruptibly(LazyReference.java:143)
 com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.get(LazyReference.java:112)
 com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceEncodingFilter.getGlobalSettings(ConfluenceEncodingFilter.java:47)
 com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceEncodingFilter.getEncodingInternal(ConfluenceEncodingFilter.java:37)
 com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceEncodingFilter.getEncoding(ConfluenceEncodingFilter.java:29)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.encoding.AbstractEncodingFilter.doFilter(AbstractEncodingFilter.java:38)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.AbstractHttpFilter.doFilter(AbstractHttpFilter.java:31)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.HeaderSanitisingFilter.doFilter(HeaderSanitisingFilter.java:44)
 com.atlassian.confluence.servlet.FourOhFourErrorLoggingFilter.doFilter(FourOhFourErrorLoggingFilter.java:65)
 com.atlassian.confluence.web.filter.DebugFilter.doFilter(DebugFilter.java:50)
 com.atlassian.core.filters.AbstractHttpFilter.doFilter(AbstractHttpFilter.java:31)

Roget Luo

Confluence version: 5.5 [build 5501]

Java version: 8 Update 171

AnnWorley

Hi Roget,

The supported Java version for Confluence 5.5 is Java 1.7 (Supported Platforms). I have not been successful running older Confluence instances against newer Java versions so let's get started by installing a supported version of Java:

If Confluence still won't start up after installing a supported version of Java, please check for more clues in the logs at:
* <confluence_install>/logs/ (anything recent in this directory)
* <confluence_home>/logs/atlassian-confluence.log
(note) The <confluence_home> directory is the path defined in the following file: <confluence_install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties

I should mention that Confluence 5.5 has passed End of Life status: Atlassian Support End of Life Policy. Please follow our guide, Upgrading Confluence when you have a chance.

Thanks,

Ann

Welcome!

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

Quick Links

Find more posts tagged with

confluence

server

confluence-server