Here are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 6.5. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Confluence 6.5 Release Notes.

Upgrade notes

SQL Server driver update

As mentioned in Confluence 6.4, we are replacing the open source jTDS driver for Microsoft SQL Server with the official Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server. All new installations now use the Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server.

If you're upgrading to Confluence 6.5 you don't need to do anything right now - you can continue to use the bundled jTDS driver, and we'll help you migrate to the Microsoft driver in an upcoming release.

If you would like to use the Microsoft driver now, see this knowledge base article to find out how to switch.  

Changes to the setup wizard

We've made some significant changes to the database configuration step of the setup wizard.  This has no impact on existing installations, but for new installations:

• You will no longer be able to specify an unsupported database or custom database driver in the setup wizard.
• You won't get the option to use a datasource connection, unless you've already added the datasource to your Tomcat configuration (in your server.xml).

Start and stop scripts for Synchrony (Data Center only)

We now provide scripts to start and stop Synchrony in Windows and Linux.  These scripts should make running Synchrony standalone much easier. You can find the scripts in your Confluence <installation-directory>/bin/synchrony directory, then move them to your synchrony node. 

If you are already running Synchrony for Data Center you can continue to start Synchrony using the start command (or your own script, if you have created one) or switch to using our scripts. 

If you're running Confluence Data Center in a Linux environment, there's also now an option to run Synchrony as a service.

See Configuring Synchrony to find out how to customise the script for your environment. 

Synchrony update

We've updated Synchrony in this release.  If you're using Confluence Server, you don't need to do anything. If you're using Confluence Data Center, you should run Synchrony using the synchrony-standalone.jar provided with Confluence 6.5 to get the latest updates. 

Attachment indexing improvements 

When a file is uploaded in Confluence, its text is extracted and indexed so that people can search for the content of a file, not just the filename. This is a pretty memory hungry process, and has caused out of memory errors for some customers. 

We will now store this extracted text in the filesystem alongside the attached file, so that when that file needs to be reindexed (for example, when the page it's attached to changes), we don't need to re-extract the content of the file.  We only extract the content when a new version of the file is uploaded, replacing the previous extracted file. 

The size of the files containing the extracted text is quite small, but over time the number of files in your attachments directory will increase (e.g. there will always be a minimum of 2 files stored for each text-based attachment). You may need to increase the storage available to your home directory (or shared home directory for Data Center instances), and consider the additional files in your backup strategy. 

If you're running Confluence in a Linux environment and see disk space errors when there is plenty of free space available, you may have exceeded the total number of inodes (the maximum number of entities, such as files or directories, that can be stored in the filesystem). We don't expect this to be a common issue. See  'Not enough space on disk' errors in Confluence 6.5 or later when disk space is available.

Better permission handling when problems detected in the ancestors table

In Confluence, view page restrictions are inherited from the parent page. This behaviour relies on the ancestors table in the database. 

From Confluence 6.5, if we detect that there are missing entries in the ancestors table for the parent of a page that a user is trying to access, we will block access to that page and log an error. This prevents people inadvertently viewing a page that should not be visible to them (because we are unable to determine the inherited view restrictions). 

If you're concerned about any pre-existing corruption in your ancestors table, you can rebuild the ancestors table immediatley after upgrading, to make sure people are not prevented from viewing pages that should be visible to them. See Rebuilding the Ancestor Table. 

Update configuration files after upgrading

The contents of configuration files such as server.xml , setenv.bat / setenv.sh and confluenceinit.properties change from time to time. 

When upgrading, we recommend manually reapplying any additions to these files (such as proxy configuration, datasource, JVM parameters) rather than simply overwriting the file with the file from your previous installation, otherwise you will miss out on any improvements we have made.

Upgrading from Confluence 5.x?

Collaborative editing is made possible by the magic of Synchrony. When you install Confluence Server, Synchrony will be configured to run as a separate process on your server.

If you're upgrading from Confluence 5.x, there are a few requirements you need to be aware of:

• Memory and CPU: You may need to give your server more resources than for previous Confluence releases. When you install Confluence, Synchrony (which is required for collaborative editing), will be configured to run as a separate process on your server. The default maximum heap size for Synchrony is 1 GB (on top of Confluence's requirements). 
• WebSockets: Collaborative editing works best with WebSockets. Your firewall / proxy should allow WebSocket connections. 
• SSL termination: SSL should be terminated at your load balancer, proxy server, or gateway as Synchrony does not support direct HTTPS connections. 
• Database drivers: You must use a supported database driver. Collaborative editing will fail with an error if you're using an unsupported or custom JDBC driver (or driverClassName in the case of a JNDI datasource connection). See Database JDBC Drivers for the list of drivers we support.
• Database connection pool: your database must allow enough connections to support both Confluence and Synchrony (which defaults to a maximum pool size of 15). 

Infrastructure changes 

For developers

Head to Preparing for Confluence 6.5 to find out more about changes under the hood.

End of support announcements

• We are replacing the open source jTDS driver with the official Microsoft JDBC Driver for SQL Server. Confluence will end support for the jTDS driver in Confluence 6.6 and you will need to switch to the Microsoft driver at that time. 
• We are ending support for the JUnit Report macro in Confluence 6.6. This macro will be removed completley in a future version. 

See End of Support Announcements for Confluence for more information. 

Known issues

• If you use Apache to limit who can access the admin console, you should update your configuration. See Using Apache to limit access to the Confluence administration interface for our suggested configuration.
• There is a known issue where some fonts that Confluence relies on are not available in older Linux distributions. See Confluence UI shows garbled or corrupt text on CAPTCHA, macros and/or diagrams due to missing fonts. 
• There is a known issue where the "hibernate dialect" property was being incorrectly retained after upgrade. Customers who have been using Confluence since version 2.4 or earlier (legends!) should check the hibernate dialect in their <confluence-home>/confluence.cfg.xml file before upgrading to Confluence 6.x to avoid this error: Upgrading fails with ERROR The size (16777215) given to the column 'event' exceeds the maximum allowed for any data type (8000) in Confluence.
• There is a known issue when upgrading Confluence with an Oracle database. Oracle users should upgrade their driver to 12.2.0.x before upgrading to Confluence 6.1 or later. See Upgrade to version 6.1.x Failed With Error "ORA-01000: maximum open cursors exceeded" for more information. 

Upgrade procedure

Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.

If you're already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

1. Go to > Support Tools > Health Check to check your license validity, application server, database setup and more.
2. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your installation directory, home directory and database.
3. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 6.4, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
4. Download the latest version of Confluence.
5. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Checking for known issues and troubleshooting the Confluence upgrade

After you have completed the steps required to upgrade your Confluence installation, check all the items on the Confluence post-upgrade checklist to ensure that everything works as expected. If something is not working correctly, please check for known Confluence issues and try troubleshooting your upgrade as described below:

• Check for known issues. Sometimes we find out about a problem with the latest version of Confluence after we have released the software. In such cases we publish information about the known issues in the Confluence Knowledge Base.
• Check for answers from the community. Other users may have encountered the same issue. You can check for answers from the community at Atlassian Community.
• Did you encounter a problem during the Confluence upgrade? Please refer to the guide to troubleshooting upgrades in the Confluence Knowledge Base.

If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and can't solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.