Unable to edit Confluence pages using HAProxy configuration

Celine Villafuerte

Good day,

We are currently migrating our Confluence instance from IP to hostname; however, we are unable to edit pages due to this error:

 

We suspect that it has something to do with Synchrony and its configuration mapping with HAProxy. In our previous IP instance, we used nginx with this configuration:

location /confluence {
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 proxy_pass http://confluence_web:8090;
 }

location /synchrony {
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 proxy_pass http://confluence_web:8091;
 proxy_http_version 1.1;
 proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
 proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
 }

Everything works fine, but after migrating to HAProxy, even though Confluence is accessible using the DNS, we experienced editing issues as seen in the screenshot above. Our current haproxy.cfg configuration looks like this:

backend confluence_server
 mode http
 balance source
 option forwardfor

server confluence 107.105.134.53:8090 check


backend synchrony_server
 mode http
 balance source
 option forwardfor

server synchrony 107.105.134.53:8091 check

We are unsure if we converted the configurations properly. We already modified our server.xml located in confluence-server/confluence_install/conf which looks like this:

<Connector port="8090" 
     protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
     connectionTimeout="20000"
     URIEncoding="UTF-8" acceptCount="10"<br>     enableLookups="false" debug="0"
     redirectPort="443"
     maxThreads="200" minSpareThreads="10"
     scheme="http"
     proxyName="mycompany.com" 
     proxyPort="80" />

We deployed the Confluence service using docker-compose and already exposed both 8090 and 8091 ports in our config file.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you. 

Dave Theodore [Coyote Creek Consulting]

It looks like you're running on Server, so I'll assume you have Synchrony and Confluence running on the same server.  I'll also assume you are running a version later than 6.2. Earlier versions of Confluence 6 Collaborative Editing worked differently than modern versions, so if you are running 6.0 or 6.1, save yourself some hassle and upgrade to the latest version.

In your HAproxy config, you are setting a context for Confluence. This will make your URL look like:

http://confluence.domain.com/confluence/display/SPACE/Page+Name

You are also calling a context for Synchrony, which will make the Synchrony traffic go to: 

http://confluence.domain.com/synchrony/heartbeat

Since you have a Confluence Context, you need the Synchrony traffic to go to:

http://confluence.domain.com/confluence/synchrony/heartbeat

In modern versions of Confluence, you don't need to do anything special with Synchrony any more, as Tomcat proxies it. Furthermore, there really is no good reason to run a Confluence Context with HAproxy sitting ahead of Confluence. 

Try this setting and get rid of the Synchrony settings:

location / {
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_pass http://confluence_web:8090;
 }