Troubleshooting Slow Performance Using Page Request Profiling

If Confluence is responding slowly, an internal timing trace of the slow page request can help to identify the cause of the delay.

Profiling An Activity

You will need access to the Confluence server to view a profile.

1. Locate Confluence's standard screen output, or stdout, on the Confluence server. Users running Confluence as a Windows service may have this logged to the /logs/stdout.log file under the Confluence install directory, while users running Confluence using startup.bat under Windows have stdout written to the command prompt window.
   
   Enable profiling using ?profile=on
2. Enable profiling by accessing any page in your Confluence instance. Modify the URL by appending ?profile=on to the end of the URL for static pages, or &profile=on if the URL is dynamic and already has parameters. For example, if your Dashboard link is

   http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action
   

   You would manually add ?profile=on to the end of the URL and visit

   http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action?profile=on
   

   Profiles for every page hit, for all users, will now be logged to stdout until Confluence is restarted. Note that each time a user visits a link, a single profile is printed.

3. Confirm that profiles are being printed to stdout.
   
   
4. Perform the activity that is resulting in unusually slow response time and copy the profile for that action. The relevant profiles are for links that took a long time to respond. If a single page is slow, only that profile is necessary. If Confluence is generally or intermittently slow, copy all profiles logged during the slowdown until a reasonable sample has been collected.
   
   
5. If you were instructed to profile your instance by Atlassian technical support, attach all relevant profiles to your support ticket.
   
   
6. Turn profiling off again by appending ?profile=off to the end of the URL for static pages, or &profile=off if the URL is dynamic and already has parameters. For example, if your Dashboard link is

   http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action
   

   You would add ?profile=off to the end of the URL and visit

   http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action?profile=off
   

7. Confirm that profiles are no longer being printed to stdout

Example Profile

The first few lines of a normal profile for accessing a page called Confluence Overview.

[344ms] - /display/ds/Confluence+Overview
  [313ms] - SiteMesh: parsePage: http://localhost:8080/display/ds/Confluence+Overview
    [313ms] - XW Interceptor: Before defaultStack: /pages/viewpage.action (ViewPageAction.execute())
      [0ms] - SpaceAwareInterceptor.intercept()
      [16ms] - PageAwareInterceptor.intercept()
        [0ms] - AOP: PageManager.getPage()
        [16ms] - AOP: PermissionManager.hasPermission()
          [0ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
          [16ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
        [0ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
      [0ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
      [281ms] - XW Interceptor: After defaultStack: /pages/viewpage.action (ViewPageAction.execute())
        [281ms] - XW Interceptor: After validatingStack: /pages/viewpage.action (ViewPageAction.execute())
           ...

Related Topics

Requesting Performance Support