Confluence Backup fails with IOException

[Christopher Lewis]

I'm trying to make a backup of my Confluence installation (General configuration / Backup and restore). I choose "Archive to backups folder" and "Backup attachments" and always get this error:

java.io.IOException: No such file or directory
	at java.io.UnixFileSystem.createFileExclusively(Native Method)
	at java.io.File.createNewFile(File.java:1012)
	at com.atlassian.core.util.FileUtils.copyFile(FileUtils.java:461)
	at com.atlassian.core.util.FileUtils.copyFile(FileUtils.java:397)
	at com.atlassian.confluence.importexport.actions.BackupAction.execute(BackupAction.java:69)

It also happens if "Backup attachments" is unchecked.

When I uncheck the option "Archive to backups folder", no error is shown, but not backup file is created in the expected location.

Now this error message isn't that helpful. The restore folder exists and is writeable for the confluence user; it even contains an older backup file, so the backup functionality seems to have worked before.

Any ideas?

[Ahmet Kilic]

Enabling Backup Path Configuration 

For security reasons, the ability to change the backup file location Backup administration screen is disabled by default. 

To enable custom backup paths:

1. Stop Confluence. 
2. Edit the <confluence-home>/confluence.cfg.xml file. 

3. Change the value of the following property to true:

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It might not be the exports/backups directory that it cannot read/write.  It uses temporary caches and temp directories, so it could be one of them, and it might even be the attachments directories its trying to write.

Does the error not say what it was trying to do?

[Christopher Lewis]

Unfortunateley not.

I now managed to migrate my Confluence installation by importing a database dump on the new server after the installation process, even if this is not the recommended way to do it.

Thanks for your help anyway!