Summary

Attempting to create a new page in Confluence, with Collaborative Editing enabled, fails with HTTP 404 Error while checking Synchrony heartbeat.

Diagnosis

1. Open your Browser's Developer Tools to view the HTTP request sent by the browser

2. Request for Synchrony heartbeat will fail with HTTP 404 Error as they are sent to the following URL: 

   https://confluence_fqdn/heartbeat

   while the expected URL should be: 

   https://confluence_fqdn/synchrony/heartbeat

3. Enabling the DEBUG log for the package com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.synchrony  and attempting again to create the page will show the following stack trace in the atlassian-confluence.log :

   2023-04-06 12:15:38,577 DEBUG [https-jsse-nio2-9443-exec-15] [confluence.plugins.synchrony.SynchronyContextProvider] getContextMap 
    -- url: /pages/createpage.action | traceId: f717e7f287a640ba | userName: tommy | action: createpage
   java.lang.NullPointerException
           at com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.synchrony.SynchronyContextProvider.getContextMap(SynchronyContextProvider.java:52)
   ...
   ...

4. If you check the related Confluence access log entry for the above error message, you will be able to find something like:

   [04/Apr/2023:12:15:38 +0000] tommy https-jsse-nio2-9443-exec-15 10.30.86.1 GET /pages/createpage.action?useDraft=true&spaceKey=&draftId=385876544&draftShareId=b298ab93-a5fd-4f52-a4d1-dac861808544&& HTTP/1.1 200 161ms 21540 - Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/108.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/108.0.1462.42

   Pay attention that the entry spaceKey query parameter is not set in the log entry. 

Cause

The actual root cause is a draft content entry which has no SPACE ID set.

It is unknown what caused the SPACE ID not to be set.

Solution

1. Perform a backup of the database connected to Confluence
2. Stop Confluence.

3. Retrieve a valid SPACE ID with the below SQL statement: 

   • PostgreSQL

   SELECT spaceid
   FROM "spaces" 
   WHERE spacetype = 'global' 
   AND spacestatus = 'CURRENT' limit 1;
   
   /* In case the space key for the Confluence space where the user is attempting to create the page is known use the below query */
   
   SELECT spaceid
   FROM spaces 
   WHERE spacekey = '<space key of the space where the problem happens'

4. Execute the below UPDATE statement in the Confluence database:

   • PostgreSQL

   UPDATE content
   SET spaceid = <valid space id>
   WHERE contentid = <content id from draftId in the Confluence access log>

5. Start Confluence.
6. Ask the user to attempt again to create the page.