Problem

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log and catalina.out.

2015-09-09 16:41:24,964 ERROR [http-nio-8090-exec-4] [[Standalone].[localhost].[/].[jsp]] log Servlet.service() for servlet jsp threw exception com.atlassian.confluence.tenant.VacantException: Confluence is vacant, a call to tenanted [public abstract net.sf.hibernate.connection.ConnectionProvider net.sf.hibernate.engine.SessionFactoryImplementor.getConnectionProvider()] is not allowed.

Diagnosis

Environment

• A cleanly installed Linux operating system

• The hostname does not resolve to an IP address, this can be confirmed by running (here the machine's hostname is ubuntu).

  $ ping `cat /etc/hostname`
  ping: unknown host ubuntu

Diagnostic Steps

1. Install a clean Linux virtual machine
2. Add a hostname into /etc/hostname or via sudo hostname <hostname>

3. remove hostname from /etc/hosts if it exists so it only has

   127.0.0.1	localhost

4. Install the latest Confluence
5. Run <confluence_install>/bin/start-confluence.sh
6. Open the homepage in a browser
7. Select Trial version
8. Select No add-ons
9. Enter the trial license key

At this point, the error appears in the logs. The error will appear with other classes if an external database is used or other options provided, however, the Confluence is vacant is consistent.

Cause

The hostname does not resolve to an IP address.

Resolution

This issue can be fixed by confirming that hostname can be resolved to an IP address.

Do one of the following:

• Edit /etc/hosts and add the hostname

  127.0.0.1	localhost	<hostname>

• Add the hostname to the DNS

To confirm the hostname resolves to an IP address, ping the hostname (here, hostname is ubuntu).

$ ping `cat /etc/hostname`
PING ubuntu (127.0.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from somepc (127.0.1.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.027 ms
64 bytes from somepc (127.0.1.1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms

Additional Notes

In some cases, the error can be like following,

2018-03-06 15:42:15,612 ERROR [http-nio-6641-exec-3] [[Standalone].[localhost].[/c641].[noop]] log Servlet.service() for servlet [noop] in context with path [/c641] threw exception
com.atlassian.confluence.tenant.VacantException: Confluence is vacant, a call to tenanted [public abstract org.hibernate.Session org.hibernate.SessionFactory.getCurrentSession() throws org.hibernate.HibernateException] is not allowed.

Which just shows that Confluence is unable to connect to its database. Further analysis of the atlassian-confluence.log will highlight other reasons for this error.

This error can also appear if the encoding of the database is not set correctly. If you suspect that this is the case, check the documentation for your database system:

• Database Setup for Oracle
• Database Setup For MySQL
• Database Setup for PostgreSQL
• Database Setup for SQL Server