Confluence and the "felix-cache"

[Jose M.]

While evaluating confluence we faced two errors while starting our JIRA and Confluence test applications:

1. "Unable to create and acquire lock file for jira.home directory ..jira/atlassian-jira-6.1.5-data"
   Solution:  Removed the file '.jira-home.lock' was owned by root:root.Retarted jira application as admin.
2. "Unable to clean the cache directory: ..jira/atlassian-jira-6.1.5-data/plugins/.osgi-plugins/felix"
   Solution : Recursively changed the ownership from root to admin:users for "felix-cache" directory in the above path.

This happens some time later after a shutdown of the JIRA live system. We never faced the problem in the past, so it looks to me, this problem could be related to Confluence. 

I have also found this issue: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-27438and, to be honest, I am surprised, why the status is "Awaiting Development". It looks more like, nothing has been done.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

This sounds like someone started JIRA as "root" rather than the correct JIRA user, then stopped it, then you restarted it with the correct JIRA user.  It breaks because the first run by root took ownership of a lot of the files and hence the JIRA user can't function properly.  

You've hit on almost the right fix - stop JIRA and recursively change the ownership of everything in the JIRA home directory back to the JIRA user (not just cache, you may have issues with logs and temp files as well)

It's nothing to do with Confluence - basically, you shouldn't start the applications as root.

[Deividi Luvison]

Hey Jose,

As mentioned by Gran Answers Master @Nic Brough [Adaptavist], we are dealing with two separated questions. The current question, which was addressed  by Nic's answer, is not related to the other post. The home lock error is related to a permission over JIRA home directory and I don't see any scenarios were a Confluence would cause problems in there .

I would suggest you to edit the question to remove confluence references so it can match to a JIRA problem and then mark it as answered.

In case we are not undestanding correctly your findings please enligh us so we can provide further assistance 

Thanks and Regards,

David| The Engineer that like Windows for realsies.

[Giuliano C_]

Just as Nic suggested, for Confluence you need to start with the 'confluence' (or any dedicated user for the instance directories), but, also remember to remove the <confluence home>/plugins-osgi-cache/felix before attempting to restart with a new user, so we can avoid any mismatching of permissions in the instance. 

Some additional info through this Confluence KB.