Problem

Confluence installation will not start properly when it's using MySQL 5.1.5+ with InnoDB and the default binary logging format - i.e. 'STATEMENT'

Diagnosis

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:

Binary logging not possible. Message: Transaction level 'READ-COMMITTED' in InnoDB is not safe for binlog mode 'STATEMENT'

or:

2012-07-26 04:28:24,589 ERROR [http-80-1] [sf.hibernate.util.JDBCExceptionReporter] logExceptions Cannot execute statement: impossible to write to binary log since BINLOG_FORMAT = STATEMENT and at least one table uses a storage engine limited to row-based logging. InnoDB is limited to row-logging when transaction isolation level is READ COMMITTED or READ UNCOMMITTED.

Cause

Confluence uses the 'READ-COMMITTED' transaction isolation level with MySQL, which currently only supports row-based binary logging. For more information about this, please refer to MySQL Bug #40360.

Resolution

To fix this problem, you must configure MySQL's binary logging format to use 'row-based' binary logging:

1. Shutdown Confluence and your MySQL database
2. Open the MySQL configuration file (my.cnf) in a text editor
   On UNIX-based systems, this file may be located in the /etc directory

3. Locate the binlog_format property in this file in the [mysqld] section and ensure that its value is row, such that you end up with:

   binlog_format=row

4. Save your changes to this file
5. Restart Confluence and your MySQL database