Oracle AL32UTF8

Question

Confluence docs talk about rebuild db for Oracle
AL32UTF8  is what they want

Our current Oracle installation has these:
NLS_CHARACTERSET        WE8MSWIN1252    
NLS_NCHAR_CHARACTERSET  AL16UTF16

Our DBA asks:
do you know any agent from Confluence vendor?
we can ask them to use our standard of nls?
I know they if they change their code to ours .. it will work..

Confluence.  I'm trying to update from 6.13.0 to 6.15.9 and didn't expect to get this Oracle Character Set error.  However I'm also trying to move to a different server.  I planned on installing clean on the new server then pointing at DB.  But one error I also get is this:

Confluence will not start up because the build number in the home directory [8100] doesn't match the build number in the database [7901].

So do I have to first upgrade on old server before using the new server.  Does our Oracle DB really have to change CHARSET?  Some of the searches I do in your knowledge share rever to AL32UTF8 issues from 2012 or 2013, which is a long time ago.

Shannon S · Answer

Hi Jeff,

Since you raised a new question, I would rather focus our efforts on one case in order to simplify things.

I'll follow-up with you there if there is anything further I can recommend.

Shannon

Jeff Kell · Answer

Hi, I've got another thread going.  Here:
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Upgrade-pains-with-Confluence/qaq-p/1288858#U1289023

Still cannot upgrade from 6.13.0 successfully.

New DB and all with new Charset...and moved from RedHat6 server to RedHat7 server on Dec 20, 2019.

Now internal audit group requiring upgrade of Confluence but it never seems to work.  See notes in the above link.

The application appears to start and run (per Linux top command) but the login page is never presented.  However if I have an ERROR at startup, I do get a web page describing the same error.  It's only after ERRORS in logs are resolved that I get no web page at the URL any longer.  And I have no idea what (if anything) confluence is doing.  I've waited up to 1 hour.  I've had to keep rolling back to 6.13.0 every time.  It then starts up in 5-6 minutes and I can login again.

We are trying to get this copy working and are hoping to move to an Enterprise version for our team soon (managed by other teams) sometime in 2020.  For now, this is our teams local copy and we need to figure out how to upgrade and what isn't working.

If you can provide advice either here or in the one I linked above, I would appreciate it.

Thanks.

Shannon S · Answer

Hello Jeff,

Apologies for the delay; I have been away for the past week.

You can check the backup locations on your server and see if a temporary backup file was created. See Configuring Backups for information on where to find that.

I would also recommend tailing your Confluence Server logs which can give you some indication of if the backup is running, or if you encountered an error.

Regards,

Shannon