Below are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 3.4. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, please read the Confluence 3.4 release notes.

On this page:

Upgrade Notes

Visibility of User Macros in the Macro Browser

As stated in the release notes, the Confluence Macro Browser and autocomplete can now show user macros as well as other macros. If your Confluence site already has some user macros, when you upgrade to Confluence 3.4 the upgrade task will set all existing user macros to be visible only to system administrators.

After upgrading, you will need to set each macro individually to be visible to all users, depending on your requirements. See the documentation on writing user macros.

Crowd 2.0.7 Upgrade Required if your Confluence is Integrated with Crowd

If your Confluence installation is integrated with Atlassian Crowd for user management and single sign-on, you will need to upgrade to Crowd 2.0.7 when upgrading to Confluence 3.4. Note also that for Confluence 3.4, there is a new Seraph authenticator to be specified in the CONFLUENCE-INSTALLATION/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/seraph-config.xml file.

<authenticator class="com.atlassian.crowd.integration.seraph.v22.ConfluenceAuthenticator"/>

Please follow the Crowd integration guide for complete instructions, including the update to the Seraph authenticator configuration. See our knowledge base article for symptoms of the problem that occurs if Crowd is not upgraded. And here are the Crowd 2.0.7 release notes.

Configuration Option for Disabling Password Confirmation (Useful if Using a Custom Authenticator)

This section is relevant to Confluence installations that use a custom authentication mechanism. You may run into problems with the Confluence security measure that requires password confirmation for administrative actions, change of email address and Captcha for failed logins.

If necessary, you can set the password.confirmation.disabled system property to disable the password confirmation functionality. See Recognized System Properties. We provide this configuration option as a workaround for issue CONF-20958.

Existing 'Remember Me' Cookies No Longer Valid

We have tightened the security of Confluence's 'remember me' functionality. As a result of this change, any existing 'remember me' cookies will be invalid after you upgrade your Confluence installation. When accessing Confluence for the first time after the upgrade, users will be prompted to log in as usual.

End of Support for Oracle 10g and Safari 3 and 3.1

As previously announced, we no longer offer support for:

• Oracle 10g from this release onwards.
• Safari 3 and 3.1 from this release onwards.

Please see End of Support Announcements for Confluence.

Advance Notice of End of Support for PostgreSQL 8.1 and Firefox 3.0

We are planning on ending support for:

• PostgreSQL 8.1 in Confluence 3.5.
• Firefox 3.0 in Confluence 3.5.

Please see End of Support Announcements for Confluence.

Clickr Theme and Left Navigation Theme No Longer Bundled with Confluence

Confluence 3.2 introduced two new themes, the Documentation theme and the Easy Reader theme. At the same time, we announced the deprecation of the following two themes:

Please note the following:

• The Clickr theme and Left Navigation theme are no longer bundled with Confluence and are not supported from Confluence 3.4 onwards.
• When you upgrade your Confluence installation to Confluence 3.4, the upgrade process will automatically migrate your spaces to the following themes:
  • Spaces using the Left Navigation theme will be converted to the Documentation theme.
  • Spaces using the Clickr theme will be converted to the Easy Reader theme.

• If you do not wish your spaces to be migrated, you can start Confluence with the following JVM parameter to prevent the conversion of the space themes:

  -Dconfluence.theme.skip.migration=true
  

  During the upgrade, the Left Navigation and Clickr themes will be removed from your Confluence site but, if you specify the above parameter, your spaces will still expect to use those themes. After the upgrade, you will need to download and install the Left Navigation and Clickr themes from the Atlassian Plugin Exchange so that your spaces can continue to use them. If you do not reinstall those themes, the affected spaces will use the default theme.

• If the upgrade process converts your spaces to the new themes and you later decide to revert to the old themes, you can get some help from the Confluence logs written during the upgrade process. The logs contain a SQL query that you can run to revert the theme migration. The relevant part of the log file looks like this:

  2010-08-05 15:13:22,572 INFO [main] [confluence.upgrade.upgradetask.ClickLeftNavMigrationUpgradeTask] doInTransaction To rollback the migration of spaces with Left Navigation Theme theme execute the following SQL:
  update BANDANA set BANDANAVALUE = '<map>\n  <entry>\n    <string>theme.key</string>\n    <string>com.atlassian.confluence.themes.leftnavigation:leftnavigation</string>\n  </entry>\n</map>' where BANDANACONTEXT in ('~SPACE-KEY1', 'SPACE-KEY2', 'SPACE-KEY3') and BANDANAKEY = 'atlassian.confluence.theme.settings'
  
  2010-08-05 15:13:22,573 INFO [main] [confluence.upgrade.upgradetask.ClickLeftNavMigrationUpgradeTask] doInTransaction To rollback the migration of spaces with Clickr theme execute the following SQL:
  update BANDANA set BANDANAVALUE = '<map>\n  <entry>\n    <string>theme.key</string>\n    <string>com.atlassian.confluence.themes.clickr:clickr</string>\n  </entry>\n</map>' where BANDANACONTEXT in ('SPACE-KEY4', 'SPACE-KEY5', 'SPACE-KEY6') and BANDANAKEY = 'atlassian.confluence.theme.settings'
  

  The words '~SPACE-KEY1', 'SPACE-KEY2', etc represent the keys of the spaces that were converted. If you run the SQL statements and install the Left Navigation and Clickr themes (see below), your spaces will be in the same state as before the upgrade task ran.

• If you restore a space from an XML backup at some time after upgrading to Confluence 3.4, the space will not be migrated to a new theme. You will need to apply a different theme manually. See Apply a Theme to a Space. Alternatively, you can download and install the Left Navigation and Clickr themes from the Atlassian Plugin Exchange if you wish to continue to use them.

Plugin Repository Macros No Longer Work

Some macros were never intended for external use, and we have always recommended that you do not add them to a wiki page. Nevertheless, it is possible that some Confluence sites have these macros on some pages. Please note that these macros no longer work in Confluence 3.4 onwards. They were part of the Plugin Repository, which we have now replaced with a new plugin manager.

These macros no longer work:

• {repository-plugin}
• {recentlyupdated-plugins}
• {popular-plugins}
• {download-stat}
• {confluence-status}
• {plugin-status}
• {plugin-repository}
• {plugins-supported}

Wiki Markup in Space Description No Longer Rendered

Please note that the space description no longer renders wiki markup. If your space descriptions include wiki markup, the markup will display as plain text.

Upgrade Procedure

If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your Confluence Home and other important directories and database. See the documentation on backing up your Confluence site. If you are using an external database, perform a database backup.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 3.3.x, then please read the Upgrade Notes Overviewand the Upgrade Notes for each version of Confluence listed on that page. (There are hyperlinks to each one.) Also:
   • If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
   • If you are upgrading from 2.2 or earlier, you will need to upgrade to Confluence 2.7.x first, confirm the upgrade was successful, then upgrade again from version 2.7.x to the latest. For more details, please refer to CONF-11767.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the upgrade guide.

Checking for Other Known Issues and Troubleshooting the Confluence Upgrade

After you have completed the steps required to upgrade your Confluence installation, check all the items on the Confluence post-upgrade checklist to ensure that everything works as expected. If something is not working correctly, please check for known Confluence issues and try troubleshooting your upgrade as described below:

• Check for known issues. Sometimes we find out about a problem with the latest version of Confluence after we have released the software. In such cases we publish information about the known issues in the Confluence Knowledge Base.
• Check for answers from the community. Other users may have encountered the same issue. You can check for answers from the community at Atlassian Community.
• Did you encounter a problem during the Confluence upgrade? Please refer to the guide to troubleshooting upgrades in the Confluence Knowledge Base.

• If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and cannot solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.

Useful Plugins

Before installing an add-on (also called a plugin) into your Confluence site, please check the add-on's information page to see whether it is supported by Atlassian, by another vendor, or not at all. See our guidelines on add-on support.

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RELATED TOPICS

Confluence 3.4 Release Notes