Purpose

This article explains how to install Confluence as a systemd service in linux. 

Pre-requisites

1. You already have Confluence installed and working, but you need it to function as a service (i.e. start on boot). 
2. Your existing Confluence installation is running under a user other than root (we'll assume the user is named 'confluence'). 

Solution

• 1. Login to the machine and elevate to the root user

  2. Create the following service config as root:

     touch /lib/systemd/system/confluence.service
     chmod 664 /lib/systemd/system/confluence.service

     Note: CentOS and RedHat linux versions can be configured to use /etc/systemd/system path as well to create this unit file. 

  3. Edit the service config as root 

     vi /lib/systemd/system/confluence.service

  4. Define the service config by putting this into confluence.service

     [Unit]
     Description=Confluence
     After=network.target
     
     [Service]
     Type=forking
     User=confluence
     PIDFile=/opt/atlassian/confluence/work/catalina.pid
     ExecStart=/opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/start-confluence.sh
     ExecStop=/opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/stop-confluence.sh
     TimeoutSec=200
     LimitNOFILE=32768
     LimitNPROC=4096
     
     [Install]
     WantedBy=multi-user.target

     Note: The above defined 'confluence' in the User line is the user under which you need to run Confluence. The name of this user may vary in your environment. 

      Note: Change <Confluence-Installation-Directory> with the full path for your installation folder (e.g. /opt/atlassian-confluence-6.2.1 )

      Note: When running SELinux in enforcing mode it may be necessary to pass the start/stop of Confluence to the bash shell, like such:

     ExecStart=/bin/bash /opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/start-confluence.sh
     ExecStop=/bin/bash /opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/stop-confluence.sh

  5. Enable and start the service as root

     systemctl daemon-reload
     systemctl enable confluence.service
     systemctl start confluence.service
     systemctl stop confluence.service
     systemctl status confluence.service

When running Confluence as a systemd service on linux the Application server working directory is displayed as "/" in the System Information page Confluence