Deleted attachments - directory renamed to "_moved_out_of_the_way"

[Grant Winney]

I attached some files (msi extension) to a page a few days ago, and when I tried to access it this morning I got the deleted attachment error:

"The attachment you were trying to download could not be found in the attachment file store. Either the file has been removed manually or there was an error in removing the record of the attachment from Confluence.

If this attachment is no longer required you can remove it from Confluence on the attachments page. Otherwise, you will need to attach a new copy."

I located the file on my file system (by its file size) and noticed the directory has been copied to "18350104_moved_out_of_the_way". The original "18350104" directory is still there too. The attachment is a zip file (7z file type). The file in the original directory is 30.1 MB but appears to be corrupt (nothing is displayed when I open it in 7zip), while the file in the copied directory is 26.6 MB and opens just fine.

I did a search of the entire attachments directory and found one other folder named "18350101_moved_out_of_the_way". The original directory is still there too. This is a large attachment (an ISO image of Visual Studio). The one in the original directory was 1.43 GB, but in the renamed directory it was only 1.18 GB. They both seem to mount just fine, but I haven't tried to actually install the software from the smaller ISO image to see if it's complete... no idea why it's 250 MB smaller.

I'm really confused by the renamed directories. I've got Microsoft Security Essentials running, but I configured it some time ago to ignore the entire "Atlassian" directory. Did Confluence run some job internally that caused the renaming? Is it encountering some conflict or something?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

That is not something confluence would do.

One of your admins, or a Windows process has moved and renamed it, and Confluence is simply telling you it's not there any more - it's been removed by something outside confluence.

[Grant Winney]

Thanks Nic. It's my personal home machine, so I'm the admin. :) It seemed like it'd be a weird thing for Confluence to do. But then it seems like it'd be a weird thing for any Windows process to do too.

I wonder if maybe Security Essentials did find something (even a false positive) and renamed the directory, but I can't find anything online to corroborate that, and there's nothing in the "quarantined" section of the app. Plus, if it did do that, I'm not sure how renaming a folder would make anything more secure.

The only other thing worth mentioning is when I uploaded some large files (500MB+) into Confluence, it'd get part way through and then choke, and just sit there in the upload screen with the progress bar not moving. I'd refresh the page and try uploading it again, and it'd work. I wonder if there's any chance that Confluence didn't/couldn't delete the partially uploaded attachment, and it created a new directory with a similar name to the original, and moved the partially uploaded file there?

It's a stretch, I know. It's just that I don't have much running on this machine and I've never encountered that behavior in Windows before. At least if I encounter it again, I'll know to look for a renamed directory...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't know of anything in Confluence that would do that, even given your partial uploads.

(by the way, 500Mb files are not something Confluence is for really, it's know not to handle large files brilliantly, and that's why the default limit is 10Mb. For large files, you probably need some other file store system and simple links from Confluence into it)

[Grant Winney]

Okay, I'll look into something like that. I realized after loading some large files into it that creating backups of the home directory is going to be a bear too. Thanks again.

[Thom]

I had the same issue today, and found out that this is actually something Confluence does. It can happen when a "page move" failed due to a time out. This is quite an old post, but it might help somebody else.

See the KB article for more information.