Problem

The Confluence startup fails and the  following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log

 2015-09-03 11:00:25,141 WARN [main] [sf.hibernate.cfg.SettingsFactory] buildSettings Could not obtain connection metadata
org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create PoolableConnectionFactory (ORA-28001: the password has expired)

Cause

The Oracle user password used by Confluence has expired

Resolution

You will need to change the password for the Confluence Oracle user and then modify the password in the Confluence configuration. Here's the detailed steps to achieve this:

1. Shutdown the Confluence
2. Reset the Oracle user password
3. Change the Oracle user password from the configuration:
   1. For datasource connection:

      • Open the <confluence-install>/conf/server.xml and look for the line similar to the one below:

        <Resource name="jdbc/confluence" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
                 username="yourusername"
                 password="yourpassword"

      • Modify the value for the password parameter to the new password.

   2. For direct JDBC connection:

      • Open the <confluence-home>/confluence-cfg.xml

      • Look for the following parameter

      • <property name="hibernate.connection.password">password</property>

      • Modify the value 'yourpassword' to the new password accordingly.

      • Restart Confluence.