Confluence just hangs on blank page

[Kirsten Achtelstetter]

Hi, 

I've downloaded a trial version of Confluence Server (5.8.4-x64) and installed it on a Windows 7 Pro box (SP1).

Going through the wizard works fine and it tells me I've successfully installed Confluence. I then click to open it in a browser and it connects to "http://localhost:8090/setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action;jsessionid=FB2AC0FCE5E7BD813C894B6F88B52C1D"

But that's where it ends. It just stays on a blank page and doesn't seem to do anything.

I've looked at the logs and under C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Confluence\logs the last log that is written to (catalina.20015-06-15) contains the following warning followed by a severe error:

15-Jun-2015 11:30:38.477 WARNING [main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.await StandardServer.await: Invalid command '' received
15-Jun-2015 11:32:53.418 SEVERE [http-nio-8090-exec-3] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.custom Exception Processing ErrorPage[errorCode=500, location=/500page.jsp]
 org.apache.jasper.JasperException: An exception occurred processing JSP page /500page.jsp at line 120

Any thoughts on how to fix this??

[Kirsten Achtelstetter]

Turns out we didn't have a Tomcat server running, so I install one as well as installing JDK and setting the %CATALINA_HOME% and %JAVA_HOME% variables to their appropriate install directories. It's now running! Phew.

[Renato Alexandre]

Kirsten, Could you provide the correct path for both os these variables in your environment please?? I'm facing the same problem....Cant figure out where is the error atm.. Thank you!

[Kirsten Achtelstetter]

There is another error in the atlassian-confluece.log which is this:

[atlassian.confluence.servlet.ConfluenceServletDispatcher] sendError Could not execute action
 -- url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unrecognised setup type: initial

Any thoughts?