Confluence Not Able to Startup Due to Windows Read-only Filesystem Attribute
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
Problem
Even with the full permission on both <Confluence-Home> and <Confluence-Installation> directories, Confluence is not able to be started up with the startup script (start-confluence.bat) on a Windows machine.
The following errors shown in the Tomcat console and nothing is logged in the atlassian-confluence.log
2015-07-29 23:35:04,131 ERROR [localhost-startStop-1] [atlassian.confluence.setup.DefaultSetupPersister] saveApplicationConfig Error writing state to confluence.cfg.xml
com.atlassian.config.ConfigurationException: Couldn't save confluence.cfg.xml to H:\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence directory.
at com.atlassian.config.xml.AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister.saveDocument(AbstractDom4jXmlConfigurationPersister.java:85)
...
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: H:\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\confluence.cfg.xml (Access is denied)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open0(Native Method)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(Unknown Source)
...
log4j:ERROR setFile(null,true) call failed.java.io.FileNotFoundException: H:\Atlassian\Application Data\Confluence\logs\atlassian-confluence.log (Access is denied)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open0(Native Method)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.open(Unknown Source)
at java.io.FileOutputStream.<init>(Unknown Source)
...
29-Jul-2015 23:35:19.053 INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-nio-8091"]
29-Jul-2015 23:35:22.381 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in 30650 ms
...
29-Jul-2015 23:36:34.490 SEVERE [http-nio-8091-exec-1] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.custom Exception Processing ErrorPage[errorCode=500, location=/500page.jsp]
com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference$InitializationException: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.getInterruptibly(LazyReference.java:149)
at com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.get(LazyReference.java:112)
at com.atlassian.confluence.plugin.servlet.filter.ServletFilterModuleContainerFilter.getServletModuleManager(ServletFilterModuleContainerFilter.java:23)
...
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.atlassian.spring.container.ContainerManager.getComponent(ContainerManager.java:33)
at com.atlassian.confluence.util.LazyComponentReference$Accessor.get(LazyComponentReference.java:46)Diagnosis
Environment
- Windows 7, Windows 8.1
Diagnostic Steps
- Navigate to the <Confluence-Home> directory.
- Right click on the folder and select Properties and check if the Read-only attributes has been enabled for the <Confluence-Home> directory itself as well as its sub-folders and files.
Cause
This issue occurs due to Windows Read-only filesystem attribute that has been enabled for <Confluence-Home> directory.
Resolution
- Navigate to the <Confluence-Home> directory.
- Right click on the folder and select Properties.
- Ensure that the Read-only attributes is not ticked and click Apply, then OK to save the changes.
- Then try to restart Confluence.