Confluence-administrator group is missing the system administrator permission
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*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
If the group confluence-administrator is removed from Confluence using direct database manipulation and then added again to the global permissions, it might not have all the administrative permissions such as the system administrator permission on the Global permissions UI.
The checkboxes will be unchecked and you are unable to check them. This message shows the group information:
The confluence-administrators group is a special group which has all permissions. You can't change the permissions for this group.
Diagnosis
Cannot modify the group confluence-administrators permissions from the UI. All the confluence-administrator permission checkboxes on the global permission page are grayed out.
Cause
There are missing permissions for the Confluence-administrators group on the database table spacepermissions.
Solution
We must add the permissions manually using the SQL commands below.
Before proceeding
Always backup your database before any data manipulation for safety reasons.
1) First, grab the user hash from the admin user (or another user name).
select user_key from user_mapping where lower_username = 'admin';2) With the user hash, run the following insert command to add the system permission to the group. Change the <user_hash> and timestamp accordingly.
insert into spacepermissions
values
(999999,
null,
'SYSTEMADMINISTRATOR',
'confluence-administrators',
null,
null,
'<user_hash>',
'2020-06-23 10:16:24.488',
'<user_hash>',
'2020-06-23 10:16:24.488');3) Restart Confluence and the group should have the system permission now.