Symptoms

1. The Confluence dashboard contains errors for the Space List macro and the Recently Updated Macro:

   

   

2. The following may appear in the atlassian-confluence.log:

   2011-11-22 18:51:30,741 ERROR [TP-Processor20] [atlassian.renderer.v2.V2Renderer] render Unable to render content due to system error: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.macros.dashboard.SpacesListMacro': Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/plugins/macros/dashboard/DashboardMacroSupport
   – url: /confluence/dashboard.action | userName: admin | action: dashboard
   com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference$InitializationException: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.macros.dashboard.SpacesListMacro': Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/plugins/macros/dashboard/DashboardMacroSupport
   at com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.getInterruptibly(LazyReference.java:148)

Diagnosis

Try enabling plugin support mode or removing a recently installed plugin to see if the error persists.

Cause

In this particular example, the error is caused by a third party plugin that did not install properly.  While the errors on the screen point to issues with Atlassian's bundled plugins that provide the two Dashboard macros, the plugins are failing to load due to conflicts with the malfunctioning plugin.

Resolution

If disabling the plugin resolved the issue, then check the Plugin Audit Log to see what plugins were recently installed and remove them. If you have any issue removing a plugin, or if there are plugin errors when you enable and disable safe mode, you may need to removing the plugin(s) manually.