Upgrading Confluence

Before you begin

Before you upgrade Confluence, there's a few questions you need to answer. 

Plan your upgrade

1. Determine your upgrade path

Enterprise releases

2. Complete the pre-upgrade checks

3. Upgrade Confluence in a test environment

Upgrade Confluence

4. Back up 

1. Back up your database and confirm the backup was created properly. 
   If your database does not support online backups you'll need to stop Confluence first.  

   Once you've confirmed your database backup was successful, you can choose to disable the automatic generation of an upgrade recovery file, as this process can take a long time for sites that are medium sized or larger.

    
2. Back up your installation directory
   The installer will completley replace this directory, so any files you've added (such as a keystore or SSL certificate) won't be retained. The installation wizard will back up this directory before starting the upgrade, but you should also back it up manually first. 
     

3. Back up your home directory. 
   The installation wizard gives you the option to also back up your home directory as part of the installation process, but you should also back up this directory manually before starting the upgrade. 
     

   Where is my home directory?

   You can find the location of your home directory in the <installation-directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties file.

   This is where your search indexes and attachments are stored. If you store attachments outside the Confluence Home directory, you should also backup your attachments directory. 

5. Download Confluence

Download the installer for your operating system. 

• Latest version https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/download
• Older versions https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/download-archives 

6. Run the installer

1. Run the installer. 
     

   Show me how to do this in Windows...

   Run the .exe file. We recommend using a Windows administrator account.

   If prompted to allow the upgrade wizard to make changes to your computer, choose 'Yes'. If you do not, the installation wizard will have restricted access to your operating system and any subsequent installation options will be limited.

   Show me how to do this in Linux...

   Change to the directory where you downloaded Confluence then execute this command to make the installer executable:

   $ chmod a+x atlassian-confluence-X.X.X-x64.bin

   Where X.X.X is is the Confluence version you downloaded.

   Next, run the installer – we recommend using sudo to run the installer:

   $ sudo ./atlassian-confluence-X.X.X-x64.bin

   You can also choose to run the installer with root user privileges.

     

2. Follow the prompts to upgrade Confluence:
    
   
   1. When prompted choose Upgrade an existing Confluence installation (for Linux users this is option 3).
        
   2. Make sure the Existing Confluence installation directory suggested by the wizard is correct (especially important if you have multiple Confluence installations on the same machine).
        
   3. Back up Confluence home is strongly recommended. This will create a .zip backup of the Confluence home and installation directories.
        

   4. The installation wizard notifies you of customizations in the Confluence Installation directory. Make a note of these as you'll need to reapply them later.

      There are some limitations...

      The installation wizard's ability to notify you about customizations will depend on how your existing Confluence instance was installed: 

      • If your current Confluence instance was installed using the installer, the wizard will check the entire Confluence Installation directory.
      • If your current Confluence instance was installed manually it will only check the confluence subdirectory of the Confluence Installation directory. The installation wizard will not notify you of modifications in any other directory, for example modifications to start-up scripts under the bin directory or modifications to the server.xml file (such as an SSL configuration). 

      You won't be notified about files you've added to the installation directory, so be sure to back them up first.

3. The wizard will shut down your Confluence instance and proceed with the upgrade. Once complete, it will restart Confluence and you can then launch Confluence in your browser to confirm the upgrade was successful.
    
   Depending on the size of your instance and the number of upgrade tasks to be run, this step may take a few minutes or several hours.

After the upgrade

7. Copy your database driver

8. Reinstall the service if required (Windows only)

If you run Confluence as a service on Windows you should delete the existing service then re-install the service by running <install-directory>/bin/service.bat.

This makes sure the service gets the most recent JVM options. 

9. Re-apply any modifications

During the upgrade the wizard migrated the following from your existing Confluence installation:

• TCP port values in your <install-directory>/conf/server.xml file. 
• Location of your Confluence home directory in <install-directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties.
    

All other customizations, including CATALINA_OPTS  parameters in your  <install-directory>/bin/setenv.sh / setenv.bat  files, need to be reapplied manually.  

10. Update your apps (add-ons)

You can update any apps that are compatible with the new version of Confluence.

1. Go to 

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2. Update your apps to the supported versions.

11. Update your reverse proxy and check you can access Confluence

Troubleshooting