Restore a Backup from Confluence 5.1.3 to a newer version 5.8.2

[Christian Gehr]

Hello!

I want to update our Confluence, so I made a new machine and installed Confluence 5.8.2. I read that it is possible.

During the Setup I tried to Restore the backupfile from our Confluence (version 5.1.3), but the restore failed because of:

Invocation of method 'isShowSignUp' in  class com.atlassian.confluence.user.actions.LoginAction threw exception java.lang.NullPointerException: Application cannot be null at /login.vm[line 6, column 28]

I also tried to make an empty installation and create the user "admin" and then restore the file, but I get the same error.

When I get the error the whole installation isn't working any more and I have to uninstall and install Confluence again.

I also want to try if Confluence installs the needed Plugins with the restore on its own.

I hope you can help me.

Kind regards,

Daniel

[Chander Inguva · Accepted solution]

Hey Rene,

                 When you wish to Upgrade confluence  It is always a good practice to upgrade existing installation rather than restoring back up file.

• Before Upgrading, check the availability of existing add-ons for the 5.8.2 version of Confluence.
• Read the known issues and  Upgrade Notes of Confluence 5.8
• Also check for supported platforms for Confluence 5.8 which includes JAVA, Database, browsers etc
• Then download a standalone zip file of confluence 5.8
• Update all configuration files like server.xml under <Install Directory>/conf, setenv.sh and catalina.sh <Install Directory>/bin
• Point the existing Confluence Data directory by editing confluence.init.properties file under <Install_Dir>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes
• Start  the confluence and Upgrade should be successful.