Confluence: What is the 'confluence user' password in a Linux install?

[Giles Parnell]

Hi

I have Confluence 5.1 installed with root access on Ubuntu 12.04. Reading the documentation it states that an additional user will be created called 'confluence' when installing. I'd like to know what the password is for this user.

Reason: I'm trying to confirm that my backups are being successfully written to the standard location: /var/atlassian/applilcation-data/confluence/backups. When browsing this location, i don't have access- as i don't know the confluence user password.

When i sudo in as root- there are 0 files in the backups location. I can confirm through the confluence admin console that the standatrd location is being written to.

Problem: Think i've now made the problem more complex for myself: In trying to view the contents of this backups directory, i searched around online for what the password of this user could be. I couldn't find anything so changed it in the Ubuntu user management console. Now in trying to run a backup manually- i get a permission denied problem as the password has changed. I have subsequently changed the confluence user password back to 'not being required' in the Ubuntu user management confluence (Is this correct?)... but am a little nervious to restart confluence in case it won't start up again.

Question:

1. Where are my backups being written to and why can't i see them in /var/atlassian/applilcation-data/confluence/backups- even when i sudo in as root?

2. Having clearly erroneously changed the confluence user password- what should i be changing this back to- to ensure i don't have any permission problems when i restart confluence?

Any help would be appreciated

Giles

[Ryan Goodwin · Accepted solution]

Hi Giles,

If I were you, I would just create a new user that you create the password for, chown the atlassian-confluence-xxx directory recursively and do the same for the confluence.home directory. You'll then need to alter your daemon or service that runs confluence, if you have one.

As for the backups, ensure that they are enabled in the Confluence scheduled jobs. They are disabled by default because of the performance hit they can instill for the application. Ensure they are scheduled for an off-peak time.

You really should have a production backup strategy in place instead of the xml backups. They are not production-worthy backups I would rely on.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Production+Backup+Strategy

Hope this helps!

[Richard Crampton]

Hi ryan, I dont suppose you happen to know what the password is for the generated user account 'Atlassian Confluence' ? I want to log onto this account to test confluence as currently I need to chmod the user directory because confluence will not start properly as my default user does not have access to the confluence-init.properties file