The License You Entered Was Not Valid
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Symptoms
During the setup wizard, in the "Enter License" step, the following error is displayed:
Possible causes
Possible cause #1
There are two lines associated with the Home directory in the <confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties file:
# This file allows you to set the directory for Confluence to store its configuration files.
#
###########################
# Note for Windows Users #
###########################
#
# Each backslash in your path must be written as a forward slash.
# - For example:
# c:\confluence\data
#
# should be written as:
#
# c:/confluence/data
###########################
# Note for Unix Users #
###########################
# - For example:
confluence.home=/var/confluence
#
# NOTE: If the path of your confluence.home directory contains symlinks,
# please set confluence.home to the absolute path, otherwise problems may occur.
# - For example:
# confluence.home=/data/confluence/ (where /data is a symlink to -> /var/data/)
# should be written as:
# confluence.home=/var/data/confluence/
###########################
# Configuration Directory #
###########################
# specify your directory below (don't forget to remove the '#' in front)
confluence.home=C:/confluence_folder/home_of_folder
If both lines are uncommented, Confluence will throw the license error.
Possible cause #2
If you have invalid permissions on your <CONFLUENCE-HOME> directory or on the <CONFLUENCE-HOME>/confluence.cfg.xml file in particular the same error may appear.
Possible cause #3
You are using a version 2 licence with a version of Confluence prior to 2.1.
Resolution
For cause #1
For cause #2
Fix the permissions on the <CONFLUENCE-HOME> directory and the confluence.cfg.xml file so that the user running Confluence will have read/write permissions.
For cause #3
Contact support to obtain a version 1 licence.
Please note that Version 1 license is meant for upgrade purposes only.
Once the upgrade process is complete, kindly log in to your My Atlassian Account to apply your existing license key.