Cannot log in as admin after installing Confluence evaluation
Asked by Dan Dragonetti:

I just installed the evaluation version of Confluence but am not able to log into the dashboard with the "admin" account that was created. Has anyone encountered this issue?


Answers:
author: Jeff_Arnold
body: On 6.5.12, as Lukas Spangenberg suggests above, this behavior is wholly dependent upon browser, and I can reproduce it every time. It works in Chrome, but does not in Firefox.

As a workaround, use a different browser.

In the meantime, Atlassian, this issue needs attention.

comments: author: Zarko Jakimovski
body: Tried Confluence 6.15.2 with trial license in Chrome 73.0, and could not log in with the admin user created during setup. I've set recovery_admin, but could not log in with it either.  
Uninstalled 6.15.2 and went back to 6.0.1 only to experience the same issue. Could not log in through Chrome and Opera, but works in Edge 42 and Firefox 65!


author: Alexandr Kirilov
body: I've got the same!!! its made me crazy. I am trying to install it and restore password. All isn't working. This is not trial license too.


author: Bill Dorman
body: Is this still an open item. Im having this exact issue. I've installed Confluence 6 times (literally) tonight. Every single time I've taken care to ensure that I'm getting the password correct. The last time I reduced the password down to 8 characters using only letters and numbers.

I tried setting the password using the recovery env variable, that didn't work either.

This is seriously crazy...

Edit: this is NOT a trial license, it's one I bought - just in case someone things that may matter.


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: Good morning

I was able to reinstall Confluence and finally got it to work. I had it working for a couple of days but now I am having a new issue. When I launch the startup.bat the command prompt opens up but shortly after it crashes. I wont stay open longer than a minute or two. Any suggestions?

comments: author: Lukas Spangenberg
body: for me it didnt work. Installed confluence, copyed password out of txt file -\> wrong password. Reinstalled 3 times. No success. Wrong password. Deleted confluence. Is there any program simmaler to confluence I can try? Confluence seems not to be a good programm if standard installation does not work.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: There is no password to copy out of a text file.

When you install Confluence, it asks you to create an initial admin user, and you give it a password. You need to remember that password to log in after completion.


author: Lukas Spangenberg
body: Yes. Lets say you choose "password" and save it in a textfile to be shure that you do type it correctly. Then you log in with the password you copied out of textfile. Login sucessfull. Then you click on administration, enter the same password what was sucessfull before and voila: "wrong password". Tryed it with 3 new installations. Found out later, that in EDGE it was working to login. Exacly same password. Firefox: "wrong password".


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Sounds like you've set something wrong then. Are you using odd characters in the username or password (anything not a-z or printed on a number key on your keyboard?). Check the log file to see what the error is.


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: Thank you for the quick reply but this is the second time I have gone through all the installation steps and both times I get stuck when trying to login. I left the default "Admin" username with a very simple password but neither time was I able to log into the dashboard. I am using SQL server 2008 for the database, not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Thanks

comments: author: Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021)
body: Hrm, interesting. I've just downloaded a clean version of Confluence 3.5.9 and run through the evaluation setup wizard, and after the admin account creation step, it didn't even ask me to log in, but logged me in automatically.

Obviously you're not getting this same experience - could you please clarify what happens for you? You start the setup wizard, create the admin account, complete the wizard, and then it's dumping you at a login prompt instead of the Confluence dashboard?

Sorry you're encountering such issues with what is normally a quick and easy process!


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: I was able to reinstall Confluence and finally got it to work. I had it working for a couple of days but now I am having a new issue. When I launch the startup.bat the command prompt opens up but shortly after it crashes. I wont stay open longer than a minute or two. Any suggestions?


author: Jo-Anne MacLeod
body: is you bring up a cmd window and run startup.bat (cd to the directory, the ,\\startup.bat) directly in the window, it will allow you to see what the problem is. My guess is that its trying trouble connecting to a database, or you are out of memory.


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: I have already tried that. When i launch startup.bat from cmd window it launches the application and it seems like it is working but only stays open for a couple of minutes.


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: Good morning

Any more suggestions regarding the issue I am having? The application crashes within minutes of either running startup.bat through command line or when I double click on startup.bat.


author: Richard Yale
body: What "only stays open for a few minutes"? The cmd window or confluence in your browser? That we need to figure out first.

Secondly, I would suggest installing Confluence as a service and not having it run the startup.bat because that is a domain account and not system account process.

Third, it would help if you attached a zip of all log files from \<confluence-install\>\\app\\logs and \<confluence-install\>\\data\\logs.

Thanks,


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: Good afternoon

The command window for Confluence only stays open for a short time before crashing. I tried to install confluence as a service but after setting it up I realized that you cannot set up confluence as a service on a 64 bit server, is this true?


author: Richard Yale
body: Check this out:

<http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Problems+Installing+Confluence+as+a+Service+on+Windows+64bit>

<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-12293>


author: Dan Dragonetti
body: Ok. I was able to install confluence as a service. I was able to start the service but after a short amount of time the service crashes thus causing the browser to crash. The JDK version I am using is 64 bit, could that be an issue?


author: Richard Yale
body: It would be best at this point if you attached the logs from the two locations I provided.


author: Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021)
body: So you created an admin user and set the password during the Confluence Setup Wizard, and immediately afterwards, weren't able to succesfully log in with the same username/password? I hate to say it, but the most likely cause - assuming you haven't done any imports or tried anything fancy with external user management - is just a simple typo when creating the user (or a caps lock issue).

There are instructions on recovering the admin account here - <http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Restoring+Passwords+To+Recover+Admin+User+Rights> - but to be honest, since it's an eval and you haven't even got in yet, the quickest solution is just to wipe the database and start again:

1) Stop Confluence

2) Wipe the database - if you're using an external database system such as Postgres, drop and recreate the database. If you're using HSQL, just delete the "database" directory in the Confluence installation directory.

3) Start Confluence again and go through the wizard.

Let us know how you go, please!


author: Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021)
body: Hi Dan, I've just updated the question title to be a bit more specific.