Issue Configuring Crowd 2.7.4 (IBM Java)

Question

Environment: OS: AIX 6.1 64-bit; Java: IBM J9 VM build 29, JRE 1.7.0; Products: Crowd 2.7.4, JIRA 6.2.1, Confluence 5.x Issue: When trying to install Atlassian Crowd, I get stuck at the point where I am trying to configure the database connection. It does not matter if the install is brand new, or migrated install and home directories, the application does not start or install successfully. The message on the screen relates to certain plugins, crowd-rest for example, not being deployed. In looking at the atlassian-crowd.log, I see these following errors: java.lang.RuntimeException: Detected an incompatible version of Apache Xerces on the classpath. If using Tomcat, you may have an old version of Xerces in $TOMCAT_HOME/common/lib/endorsed that will need to be removed. Is it the case that IBM Java might not be supported by Atlassian? I was able to get JIRA and Confluence installed on the java version, but Crowd is a no-go. Any ideas?

Caspar Krieger · Answer

(Atlassian isn't associated with OpenJDK or Oracle's JDK other than that we support our apps on them, so I take it you mean "can I get OpenJDK or Oracle's JDK to work on AIX?")

Anyway, I'm not sure. I googled and found an OpenJDK port to AIX, but of course I don't have an AIX machine handy to test on. It might work, but I should point out that AIX isn't a supported OS for Crowd either, so you'll still be swimming upstream.

Eric C3 · Answer

Caspar,

Thanks for the reply. Do you by chance know if Atlassian has a OpenJDk or Oracle JDK that is compatible with AIX, or where I could get it?

Caspar Krieger · Answer

We (Crowd developers) don't test Crowd against the IBM JVM because we don't support it; we only support Sun/Oracle and OpenJDK JVMs. This KB article says as much.

I'm not sure if JIRA and Confluence test against the IBM JVM; I've never heard that they do, but that doesn't mean they don't. Personally I suspect you got lucky with JIRA and Confluence so far.