Why is the sidebar missing in my Confluence 5 instance?

[David Meacock]

Hi,

Recently we upgraded from Confluence 4.x to Confluence 5, and we've been enjoying the experience. However, since discovering that we couldn't find 'space admin' any longer we've realised that we're missing the entire Confluence 5 sidebar in our installed instance!

Is there any reason we wouldn't see this after our upgrade? And is there an alternative way to reach the 'orphaned child' and 'space admin' pages that used to be accessible through the old top menu bar?

Thanks,

Dave.

[hsuhailah · Accepted solution]

I hope this is not a production server because internal/HSQL database should not be used as a production database. It is included for evaluation purposes only.

You can connect to HSQLDB using DBVisualizer. Here's the documentation. However making changes to HSQLDB might caused some other problem.

It is recommended to migrate from HSQLDB to MySQL instead.

[hsuhailah]

It could be that there is an essential system plugin (which provides the sidebar) that got disabled. Could you please run the following query against Confluence database and paste the result here:

select BANDANAVALUE from BANDANA where BANDANAKEY = 'plugin.manager.state.Map';

[David Meacock]

We're using the internal db at the moment, is there a particular way I access that?

[Bhushan Nagaraj]

Hi David,

Take a look at this doc.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Confluence+5+Sidebar+does+not+display

Before that, are you sure your sidebar is not just hidden? The shortcut key to hide sidebar is " [ ". Try clicking the " [ " key and make sure your sidebar is not hidden.

Cheers

Bhushan

[David Meacock]

Hi Bhushan,

I don't have that exact problem but I do see this in our logs:

2013-06-20 08:39:32,533 ERROR [http-8090-57] [plugin.descriptor.web.ConfluenceWebInterfaceManager] getHtml Failed to render web panel: com.atlassian.plugin.web.descriptors.DefaultWebPanelModuleDescriptor$ContextAwareWebPanel@1abe16cd

-- url: /pages/viewpage.action | page: 7831901 | userName: anonymous | referer: http://confluence:8090/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=7831901 | action: viewpage

java.lang.NullPointerException

at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.ia.impl.DefaultSpaceBeanFactory.createSpaceBean(DefaultSpaceBeanFactory.java:36)

at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.ia.ui.DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.populateWithMainSidebarData(DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.java:131)

at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.ia.ui.DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.getContextMap(DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.java:75)

at com.atlassian.plugin.web.descriptors.DefaultWebPanelModuleDescriptor$ContextAwareWebPanel.getHtml(DefaultWebPanelModuleDescriptor.java:143)

at com.atlassian.confluence.plugin.descriptor.web.ConfluenceWebInterfaceManager$ExceptionHandlingWebPanel.getHtml(ConfluenceWebInterfaceManager.java:177)

'[' gives no joy, unfortunately!

[David Meacock]

Looks like Hanis and Bhushan are on the money - we'll be planning in the migration shortly to mySQL before more people start using the database - but in the meantime I've discovered that by using the Documentation theme I get (a) sidebar but more importantly, access to the space tools that I previously couldn't see due to the default team bugging out. People can now get to orphaned pages etc like we used to... lovely!

[Gerald Hochegger]

Hello,

we get the same exception when trying to view the sidebar - but only when we access a public space with the "anonymous" user.

If we login with a wiki user the sidebar of this space appears without problems.

If I change the theme of this space to "Documentation Theme" the sidebar appears for the anonymous user.

Changing the theme of this space back to the Confluence default theme makes the sidebar disapear again for the anonymous user..

You can try it yourself:

https://wiki.aau.at/display/~ghoch/Gerald+Hochegger+Home

gives:

2013-08-05 10:55:19,114 ERROR [TP-Processor12] [plugin.descriptor.web.ConfluenceWebInterfaceManager] getHtml Failed to render web panel: com.atlassian.plugin.web.descriptors.DefaultWebPanelModuleDescriptor$ContextAwareWebPanel@7757ada8
-- url: /display/~ghoch/Gerald+Hochegger+Home | page: 12058652 | userName: anonymous | referer: https://wiki.aau.at/spacedirectory/view.action | action: viewpage

java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.ia.impl.DefaultSpaceBeanFactory.createSpaceBean(DefaultSpaceBeanFactory.java:36)
at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.ia.ui.DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.populateWithMainSidebarData(DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.java:131)
at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.ia.ui.DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.getContextMap(DefaultSoySidebarContextProvider.java:75)

We are using postgres for our datebase - the query above gives:

select BANDANAVALUE from BANDANA where BANDANAKEY = 'plugin.manager.state.Map';

<map>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.whatsnew:show-whats-new-flag</string>
<boolean>true</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.confluence-software-blueprints:requirements-item</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.mxgraph.confluence.plugins.diagramly:diagramly-blueprint-page</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.whatsnew</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>confluence.sections.attachments:edit</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.confluence-paste:autoconvert-jira</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>confluence.sections.attachments</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.extra.officeconnector:editattachmentinworditempathauth</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>confluence.sections.attachments:remove-version</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.confluence-business-blueprints:file-list-item</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.atlassian.confluence.extra.officeconnector:editattachmentinworditem</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>confluence.sections.attachments:remove</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
<entry>
<string>com.mxgraph.confluence.plugins.diagramly:diagramly-blueprint-item</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
</map>

Please help me fix this - we need this for public personal spaces.

Thanks,

Gerald

[David Meacock]

The migration is the next thing on our list - it's just our little dev team wiki server. Had to finish the upgrade first :)

Will look at the documentation next week, Friday beers now :)

[hsuhailah]

A-ha! Cheers!