Multiple problems due to file system permissions configuration

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Symptoms

A wide variety of symptoms can occur, including:

  1. Unable to update or license key. One of the most common errors to appear is "The license you entered was not valid"
  2. Unable to upload attachments.
  3. Unable to move or copy pages with attachments.
  4. Unable to install Confluence.
  5. Indexer not updating. For more details: See here.

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:

2008-02-28 03:41:24,372 ERROR [TP-Processor2] [opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.ServletDispatcher] serviceAction Could 
not execute action -- url: /confluence/setup/dosetuplicense.action | userName: anonymous
com.atlassian.config.ConfigurationException: Couldn't save confluence.cfg.xml to /export/confluence/data directory.
	at com.atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister.saveDocument
    (AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister.java:75)
	at com.atlassian.config.xml.DefaultDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister.save(DefaultDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister.java:23)
...
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Permission denied
	at java.io.UnixFileSystem.createFileExclusively(Native Method)
	at java.io.File.createNewFile(File.java:850)

If you cannot create attachments, something like this may appear in the atlassian-confluence.log

ERROR [http-8080-9] [confluence.pages.thumbnail.DefaultThumbnailManager] getThumbnailsFolder Containing folders 
/data/confluence/data/thumbnails/34677261 for the attachment test.png could not be created

Cause

This is caused by a problem with the directories' permissions. Users are not granted the necessary permission to access the directories.

Resolution

Grant all Operating Systems permissions for the user running Confluence to access the confluence-home and confluence-install directories. Refer to Confluence Home and other important directories for the location of the confluence-home directory.

(info) If you are still getting java.io.UnixFileSystem.createFileExclusively although the permissions are all set and it occurred when trying to generate an XML backup, you are hitting this bug instead: CONF-28575 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Last modified on Mar 30, 2016

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