Bamboo upgrade failing with error "Exception starting filter license"
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. 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
While upgrading Bamboo, Upgrade fails with the error "Exception starting filter - license"
Environment
Issue is seen while upgrading from 7.2.4 to 8.2.2
Diagnosis
The following error is seen on the application and Catalina logs.
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ERROR [localhost-startStop-1] [[/]] Exception starting filter [license]
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.atlassian.bamboo.filter.LicenseFilter
at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoaderBase.loadClass(WebappClassLoaderBase.java:1420)1
SEVERE [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal One or more Filters failed to start. Full details will be found in the appropriate container log fileCause
The cause of the Issue is wrong filter-class com.atlassian.bamboo.filter.LicenseFilter present in the BAMBOO-INSTALL/atlassian-bamboo/WEB_INF/web.xml file.
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<filter>
<filter-name>license</filter-name>
<filter-class>com.atlassian.bamboo.filter.LicenseFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
This filter is present in web.xml of 7.2.4 and not for 8.2.2 in the default configurations.
Solution
The first option is to remove the filter from web.xml file as mentioned under the cause section and restart Bamboo.
Other option is to download a fresh installation folder and restart the upgrade process, this is to rule out the possibility of the corruption of the installation folder.
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