Purpose

Sometimes it's necessary to test connectivity to Confluence hosted in a headless Linux environment. The methods described in this article should only be used if you have access to the headless server.

Solution

Using Telnet

• SSH to the headless server
• Find the listening port Confluence is listening on by opening the <Confluence Install Directory>/conf/server.xml file and finding the Connector port property. Note that you can have multiple connectors, however, the default one on newer versions of Confluence is 8090
• Also, note the Context path variable in the server.xml. In this example we will use Context path="/confluence"

• Make sure Telnet is available on the server and run the following: telnet <localhost> <Port where Confluence is listening on> . 
  
  

  telnet localhost 8090

• You will get connection details if connecting properly:

  Trying ::1...
  Connected to localhost.
  Escape character is '^]'.

• Run the following command and press enter 2 times: 
  GET </ContextPathNotedInPreviousSteps/> HTTP/1.1
  HOST: localhost

  Make sure to add the "/" after the context path.

  GET /confluence/ HTTP/1.1
  HOST: localhost

• If Tomcat is resolving requests properly, you should get a response from the login page in Confluence. Note the 302 found status and /confluence/login.action page location.

  HTTP/1.1 302 Found
  Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
  X-Confluence-Request-Time: 1469203272054
  Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=6EBBD526BC2A2C4A252170285B4B80CD; Path=/confluence/; HttpOnly
  X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
  X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
  X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
  Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self'
  Location: /confluence/login.action?os_destination=%2Findex.action&permissionViolation=true
  Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
  Content-Length: 0
  Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:01:12 GMT

• On the other hand, if you get a 400 Bad Request or 404 Not Found status, Tomcat is likely not resolving requests.

  HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
  Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
  Transfer-Encoding: chunked
  Date: Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:04:23 GMT
  Connection: close

Using cURL

• SSH to the headless server
• Find the listening port Confluence is listening on by opening the <Confluence Install Directory>/conf/server.xml file and finding the Connector port property. Note that you can have multiple connectors, however, the default one on newer versions of Confluence is 8090.
• Also, note the Context path variable in the server.xml. In this example we will use Context path="/confluence"
• Make sure you have cURL installed and are able to use it from the terminal or command prompt. 

• Run the following: curl -v <localhost>:<Port where Confluence is listening on>/<ContextPathNotedInPreviousSteps> . 

  curl -v localhost:8090/confluence

• You will get connection details if connecting properly:

  HTTP/1.1 302 Found
  < Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:27:03 GMT
  * Server Apache-Coyote/1.1 is not blacklisted
  < Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
  < Location: http://ProxiedHost/confluence/
  < Content-Length: 0

• If you get a status of 302 Found, it means that Confluence is resolving requests on the specified URL.

• On the other hand, if you get a 404 Not Found response, Confluence is likely not responding using the specified URL and port.

  * Connected to localhost (::1) port 80 (#0)
  > GET /confluence HTTP/1.1
  > User-Agent: curl/7.37.1
  > Host: localhost
  > Accept: */*
  >
  < HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
  < Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:36:53 GMT
  * Server Apache/2.4.9 (Unix) PHP/5.5.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8zc is not blacklisted
  < Server: Apache/2.4.9 (Unix) PHP/5.5.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8zc
  < Content-Length: 209
  < Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

• If you want to check what is returned when following the redirection run:

  curl -vL localhost:8090/confluence

• You will receive an output similar to the one below, which will show you the html code of the Confluence login page (or SSO login if configured):

  * Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 8090 (#0)
  > GET /c7137 HTTP/1.1
  > Host: localhost:8090
  > User-Agent: curl/7.74.0
  > Accept: */*
  > 
  * Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
  < HTTP/1.1 302 
  < Location: /confluence/
  < Transfer-Encoding: chunked
  < Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 11:07:37 GMT
  < 
  * Ignoring the response-body
  { [5 bytes data]
    0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
  * Connection #0 to host localhost left intact
  * Issue another request to this URL: 'http://localhost:8090/confluence/'
  * Found bundle for host localhost: 0xaaaacd893ef0 [serially]
  * Can not multiplex, even if we wanted to!
  * Re-using existing connection! (#0) with host localhost
  * Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 27137 (#0)
  > GET /confluence/ HTTP/1.1
  > Host: localhost:8090
  > User-Agent: curl/7.74.0
  > Accept: */*
  > 
  * Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
  < HTTP/1.1 200 
  < Cache-Control: no-store
  < Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
  < X-Confluence-Request-Time: 1677150457485
  < Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=FB5CF728ED905E1638872DCF41286467; Path=/confluence; HttpOnly
  < X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
  < X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
  < X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
  < Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self'
  < X-Accel-Buffering: no
  < Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8
  < Transfer-Encoding: chunked
  < Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 11:07:37 GMT
  < 
  { [7717 bytes data]
      
  
  <!DOCTYPE html>
  <html>
  [...]
  </html>
      
  * Connection #0 to host localhost left intact