How do I solve the confluence installation problems?

[Thomas Schmidiger]

Hi there

New to confluence and am trying to install the trial software on a Windows Server. The installation wizard went through fine. Then it opened the browser and I generated a key. It copied the very long key into the text area and I clicked "Next". For the following 30 minutes nothing happened, so I closed the browser and did a full uninstall & reboot.

Now when I install confluence, the wizard still runs through fine. Setting the default ports and running confluence as a service. However now when the browser starts, nothing happens. It just appears to be trying to connect to localhost and I wait in front of a blank page. I don't even reach the page to input the key.

Any ideas?

[Thomas Schmidiger · Accepted solution]

Renato's answer fixed the problem, thx to Nic too for the support and pointing me in the right direction.

Hi Jonathan, 

I had a look on your logs, and I believe you are facing this bug. Also there is a workaround to fix it. 

-- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous | action: setupembeddeddb-default

java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space

Do you mind to try it and let us to know if it solve your problem ?

Cheers, 

Renato Rudnicki

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

What does the log file say?

[Thomas Schmidiger]

Which one, the log file called catalina.[DATE].log?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That one could tell us something. The application log might have more though - should be called atlassian-confluence.log and live under <confluence home>/logs

[Thomas Schmidiger]

The atlassian-confluence.log doesn't appear to exist. Having used all the default settings, where should the <confluence home> directory be? (Apologies for the basic questions, but I'm a newbie. I've seen this <confluence home> folder mentioned in other posts, but I often don't see the subfolders mentioned. Possibly because I have the latest version and the posts I was reading referred to an older version.)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Mmm, depends on how you ran it. In most installs, you'll have been asked where to place it, and even just accepting the defaults won't help us find it here, because it'll be relative to where you're running the installer and depends on what OS you're on. You will always have the full set of directories under the home directory though, if confluence is running ok. If they're not there, it creates them, even if it's not going to use them all. If you're not getting anything in the home directory, then Confluence isn't even starting and you want to look at catalina.out

[Jonathan Crosby]

As a new user I am only allowed to post 3 questions in 24 hours. Okay, so I just created a new account.

Sorry, by searching the whole drive and not just the Confluence folder, I have now found it under Application Data. This is probably clear to experienced users, but not for a newbie like me.

Yes, cheers Stephen, as soon as I try to access the page from another device, I will open in the inbound ports, thx.

However my problem still exists. Looking into the atlassian-confluence.log file and searching for "error", this shows an outofmemory error. The host server has enough memory and is only using around 40% of it during this process.

There was a Java Update on the server today (Build 1.7.0_67-b01). Could this have anything to do with the issue. On the same server I was successfully able to install JIRA yesterday. Prior to installing Confluence I stopped the Atlassian JIRA Service though.

Here is part of the log file, where the first error appears:

2014-09-16 17:12:41,314 WARN [ThreadPoolAsyncTaskExecutor::Thread 20] [beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory] getTypeForFactoryBean FactoryBean threw exception from getObjectType, despite the contract saying that it should return null if the type of its object cannot be determined yet
 -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous | action: setupembeddeddb-default
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
2014-09-16 17:12:41,330 WARN [ThreadPoolAsyncTaskExecutor::Thread 7] [beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory] getTypeForFactoryBean FactoryBean threw exception from getObjectType, despite the contract saying that it should return null if the type of its object cannot be determined yet
 -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous | action: setupembeddeddb-default
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space
    at java.lang.reflect.Proxy.defineClass0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.reflect.Proxy.getProxyClass0(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Proxy.getProxyClass(Unknown Source)
    at org.springframework.osgi.service.importer.support.OsgiServiceProxyFactoryBean.getObjectType(OsgiServiceProxyFactoryBean.java:147)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.FactoryBeanRegistrySupport.getTypeForFactoryBean(FactoryBeanRegistrySupport.java:55)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.isTypeMatch(AbstractBeanFactory.java:419)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.getBeanNamesForType(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:223)
    at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.invokeBeanFactoryPostProcessors(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:424)
    at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.access$1100(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:69)
    at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext$4.run(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:331)
    at org.springframework.osgi.util.internal.PrivilegedUtils.executeWithCustomTCCL(PrivilegedUtils.java:85)
    at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.completeRefresh(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:320)
    at org.springframework.osgi.extender.internal.dependencies.startup.DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor$CompleteRefreshTask.run(DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor.java:132)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
2014-09-16 17:12:41,330 WARN [ThreadPoolAsyncTaskExecutor::Thread 13] [beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory] getTypeForFactoryBean FactoryBean threw exception from getObjectType, despite the contract saying that it should return null if the type of its object cannot be determined yet
 -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous | action: setupembeddeddb-default

[Stephen Gurnick]

Something else to verify just to be sure - by default Confluence is configured to accept connections on port 8090.  Make sure any firewalls you have in place allow connections through this port. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I can understand a limit on questions, but it's a right pain on comments and answers on your own question! I feel an improvement request may be logged in a minute... Yes, I know it's a pain for a newbie - when I run unfamiliar software, I have exactly the same problem, in that I'm not sure where to look for anything. Sadly, until someone sorts out some decent form of standards, we're all in the same boat. (MS aren't going to do it because they're dreadful and won't want to fit in with any sane scheme that Unix might want to do. Apple will ignore everyone else as usual, and the leaders in the Unix field will all come up with 3 schemes each. Ugh) Anyway... java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space is a good solid error to work with and quite a "nice" one. PermGen is a fixed block of reserved memory for Java to load cunks of stuff into and keep to hand to keep things running. It never releases any of that memory until the Java process finishes, so if you overload it, you're stuffed. But, you really can just increase it without any penalty. Note that it's a fixed limit, it doesn't matter if you've got 128Gb RAM, PermGen is set as the process starts, and it's capped at whatever you say. All the other memory settings in Java are a bloody nightmare to understand or fix. With PermGen, you just increase the limit (usually by 128M on each iteration of trying to fix it) until everything is running ok. Under the place you installed Confluence, you should find /bin/setenv.sh - in there, there is a line or chunk that says something like CONF_MAX_PERM_SIZE=256m. Edit it up by 128m and restart (don't miss the m!). If you run out again, try adding another 128m.

[Jonathan Crosby]

Thx for your help so far. I increased the perm size (setenv.bat in our case), however I'm still not getting past the license screen. Here is the very beginning of the confluence log file: 2014-09-17 10:13:20,367 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] contextInitialized Starting Confluence 5.6.1 [build 5635 based on commit hash 60fd2eb45debbf4ede2b669f4c9b96b4ce40a937] 2014-09-17 10:13:21,972 WARN [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml7837815489456680776tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. 2014-09-17 10:13:26,595 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] earlyStartup Plugin system earlyStartup begun 2014-09-17 10:13:30,127 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] earlyStartup Plugin system earlyStartup finished in 0:00:03.531 2014-09-17 10:13:30,128 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] lateStartup Plugin system lateStartup begun 2014-09-17 10:13:31,248 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] lateStartup Plugin system lateStartup finished in 0:00:01.120 2014-09-17 10:13:31,827 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] init Confluence is ready to serve 2014-09-17 10:14:30,739 FATAL [localhost-startStop-2] [atlassian.spring.container.SpringContainerContext] getComponent Spring Application context has not been set 2014-09-17 10:14:30,779 WARN [localhost-startStop-2] [atlassian.confluence.plugin.PluginFrameworkContextListener] contextDestroyed Failed to shut down plugin system during ServletContext shutdown: Spring Application context has not been set 2014-09-17 10:14:30,779 INFO [localhost-startStop-2] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] contextDestroyed Stopping Confluence 2014-09-17 10:14:30,782 INFO [localhost-startStop-2] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] shutdown Shutting down the plugin system 2014-09-17 10:19:40,595 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] contextInitialized Starting Confluence 5.6.1 [build 5635 based on commit hash 60fd2eb45debbf4ede2b669f4c9b96b4ce40a937] 2014-09-17 10:19:42,641 WARN [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml5835494144090264981tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. 2014-09-17 10:19:42,898 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] earlyStartup Plugin system earlyStartup begun 2014-09-17 10:19:46,269 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] earlyStartup Plugin system earlyStartup finished in 0:00:03.369 2014-09-17 10:19:46,270 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] lateStartup Plugin system lateStartup begun 2014-09-17 10:19:47,585 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] lateStartup Plugin system lateStartup finished in 0:00:01.315 2014-09-17 10:19:48,424 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] init Confluence is ready to serve 2014-09-17 10:19:48,886 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-3] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml6540825553793257383tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- url: /setup/setupstart.action;jsessionid=EA2DA39F058304AFDC0C6754EEE906FB | userName: anonymous 2014-09-17 10:19:53,265 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-5] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml3265407001480151311tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setupstart.action;jsessionid=EA2DA39F058304AFDC0C6754EEE906FB | url: /setup/dosetupstart.action | userName: anonymous | action: dosetupstart 2014-09-17 10:19:53,270 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-5] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml1045375765135952591tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setupstart.action;jsessionid=EA2DA39F058304AFDC0C6754EEE906FB | url: /setup/dosetupstart.action | userName: anonymous | action: dosetupstart 2014-09-17 10:19:53,274 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-5] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml1633885852022063633tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setupstart.action;jsessionid=EA2DA39F058304AFDC0C6754EEE906FB | url: /setup/dosetupstart.action | userName: anonymous | action: dosetupstart 2014-09-17 10:20:24,972 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml2182449437222223147tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/dosetuplicense.action | userName: anonymous | action: dosetuplicense 2014-09-17 10:20:24,977 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml8724973810053663855tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/dosetuplicense.action | userName: anonymous | action: dosetuplicense 2014-09-17 10:20:24,981 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister] saveDocumentAtomically Unable to move C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml5047443787000300258tmp to C:\Program Files\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml. Falling back to non-atomic overwrite. -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/dosetuplicense.action | userName: anonymous | action: dosetuplicense 2014-09-17 10:20:25,012 INFO [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [springframework.web.context.ContextLoader] initWebApplicationContext Root WebApplicationContext: initialization started 2014-09-17 10:20:27,911 INFO [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle] <init> Loading EhCache cache manager 2014-09-17 10:20:32,241 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [org.springframework.beans.TypeConverterDelegate] findDefaultEditor PropertyEditor [com.sun.beans.editors.EnumEditor] found through deprecated global PropertyEditorManager fallback - consider using a more isolated form of registration, e.g. on the BeanWrapper/BeanFactory! -- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous | action: setupembeddeddb-default 2014-09-17 10:20:38,665 INFO [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [springframework.web.context.ContextLoader] initWebApplicationContext Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 13651 ms 2014-09-17 10:20:38,669 INFO [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] shutdown Shutting down the plugin system 2014-09-17 10:20:38,712 INFO [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [atlassian.plugin.manager.DefaultPluginManager] earlyStartup Plugin system earlyStartup begun 2014-09-17 10:20:38,800 WARN [http-bio-8090-exec-1] [osgi.container.felix.ExportsBuilder] getUrlClassPath Cannot deep scan non file 'http://felix.extensions:9/';

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Now it's unable to write to the file system properly - you'll need to check permissions and disk space to begin with, because that looks like the operating system breaking it.

[Jonathan Crosby]

disk space is fine and the permissions too. the user has full control on all the install and home directory. what I think is strange, is that jira worked fine and confluence is causing so much pain. the only thing that changed between installs was a Java Update. I have no idea what is causing this install to fail now. any ideas?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Your log file is saying it can't move files around, which is usually a problem with the OS rather than Confluence. You need to fix that, that's all I can really tell you.

[Thomas Schmidiger]

Hi Renato Thx so much, this did fix my problem. Changing the values in setenv.bat didn't work, as it was running as a service. Of course all this seems obvious in retrospect. Describing this unfortunate newbie experience could be helpful for future trial users. Here are some of the confussions / problems I faced: - having installed the software according to the confluence guide, it is very confusing, when the installation just doesn't continue. is there no way of implementing a timeout & message? the installation guide should have a link to such apparently common issues such as memory issues - when the installation fails & I run the uninstall, the home directory is not removed and some other folders too. this might seem obvious to experienced users, however it prevented me from installing a new instance in the same location. if the uninstall just had that info message, that would already be a great help. i understand that existing confluence data shouldn't be overwritten, but as a beginner, who installed, uninstalled and then tried another fresh install, this just isn't obvious, that i have to manually delete these folders first, as i didn't have any data to migrate, as the installation failed - Jira allows a trial user to install the database to SQL Server / Confluence doesn't give an option to choose the database during the trial. this means that after testing and creating the basic layout, design & users to show the rest of the team to convince them of the product, a migration of the settings is required to the desired database is required after buying the license. this step requires a fresh install and is a waste of my time. - the installation guide could include a link to the firewall ports document Jira installation & configuration: 2 hours Confluence installation & configuration: 3 days Hope this helps future newbies or for the Confluence team to improve an installation. my boss had given me another day to get it running or would've started to evaluate different products.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

He's already fixed that.

[rrudnicki]

Hi Jonathan, 

I had a look on your logs, and I believe you are facing this bug. Also there is a workaround to fix it. 

-- referer: http://localhost:8090/setup/setuplicense.action | url: /setup/setupembeddeddb-default.action | userName: anonymous | action: setupembeddeddb-default
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space

Do you mind to try it and let us to know if it solve your problem ?

Cheers, 

Renato Rudnicki