Mail server at location is not of required type javax.mail.Session
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
The following error is displayed when adding a JNDI setting to an email server (especially if you are connecting your instance to Gmail). This is also commonly seen after an upgrade if you had JNDI configured for your email server.
The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:
An error has occurred with sending the test email:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Mail server at location [java:comp/env/mail/GmailSMTPServer] is not of required type javax.mail.Session.Cause
As explained on Setting Up a Mail Session for the Confluence Distribution, you need to ensure that you move (don't copy) mail-x.x.x.jar from <confluence-install>\confluence\WEB-INF\lib to <confluence-install>\lib (x.x.x. represents the version numbers on the jar files in your installation).
Don't leave a renamed backup of the jar files in \confluence\WEB-INF\lib. Even with a different file name, the files will still be loaded as long as it remains in the directory.
Workaround
Removing the duplicate file should solve the problem.
- Shutdown Confluence
- Delete the
mail-x.x.x.jarfrom<confluence-install>\confluence\WEB-INF\lib - Restart Confluence and attempt to reconfigure your mail server again.
Resolution
This is being tracked at in the following for a permanent resolution: CONFSERVER-43358 - Upgrading Confluence recreates the mail-x.x.x.jar file that is *moved* when creating a JNDI Connection.