User directory sync fails due to emoticons in the AD description field of groups

Still need help?

The Atlassian Community is here for you.

Ask the community


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

   

Summary

Synchronising Confluence with external AD directory fails and the following is seen in the UI when synchronisation is done:

Synchronization failed. See server logs for details.


Upon checking the atlassian-confluence.log , the following error is seen as the cause of the failure:

2021-05-04 14:32:55,129 INFO [Caesium-1-4] [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteChangeOperations] addGroups added [ 0 ] groups successfully in [ 1196ms ]
2021-05-04 14:32:55,184 ERROR [Caesium-1-4] [engine.jdbc.spi.SqlExceptionHelper] logExceptions Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x8A\xF0\x9F...' for column 'description' at row 1
2021-05-04 14:32:55,184 ERROR [Caesium-1-4] [atlassian.confluence.event.BatchingMultiEventPublisher] publishAll Failed to flush existing session. Unable to publish events
net.sf.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: could not execute statement


The ERROR records indicate that Confluence is detecting a string value that it cannot accept for the description field of groups. These string values represent emoticons. 

Environment

Confluence connected to an external AD

Diagnosis

  1. In Confluence: Head over to General Configuration >> User Directories 
  2. In front of an AD directory, a failure message is seen like the following:

    Synchronization failed. See server logs for details.
  3. Attempting to manually synchronise will also return the above message. 
  4. Checking the atlassian-confluence.log  Error records such as the following is seen:
2021-05-04 14:32:55,129 INFO [Caesium-1-4] [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteChangeOperations] addGroups added [ 0 ] groups successfully in [ 1196ms ]
2021-05-04 14:32:55,184 ERROR [Caesium-1-4] [engine.jdbc.spi.SqlExceptionHelper] logExceptions Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x8A\xF0\x9F...' for column 'description' at row 1
2021-05-04 14:32:55,184 ERROR [Caesium-1-4] [atlassian.confluence.event.BatchingMultiEventPublisher] publishAll Failed to flush existing session. Unable to publish events
net.sf.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException: could not execute statement

Cause

Confluence does not accept emoticons for group description. As such, when it encounters these values it will stop synchronisation and will return the above error records in both the UI and the logs.

Solution

  • Please contact your LDAP administrator and ensure that the description fields of all the groups being synchronised does not contain any emoticons. 
  • To find the exact point where synchronisation fails by enabling SQL Logging in Confluence and attempting the synchronisation again. With SQL logging enabled, you can spot the last SQL query that was attempted before synchronisation failed. This will indicate the "description" value that caused the failure.



Last modified on Aug 9, 2021

Was this helpful?

Yes
No
Provide feedback about this article
Powered by Confluence and Scroll Viewport.