TOMCAT extremely slow to start
Asked by Andreas Bartels:

Hi,

I migrated server from trial to production on a starter licence.  
(read the story here - maybe not that important:  
<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Problems-installing-Confluence-on-Windows/qaq-p/1034371>)

I see troubles starting TOMCAT in a reasonable amount of time.  
Takes exactly 1:30 minutes.

I know - might not seem like much, but before the migration it was up so fast I didn't even realize - so I must be missing something.

Is there some confluence specific document on TOMCAT that together with the catalina.log can help me analyze the situation?

Thanks. Andreas.


Answers:
author: JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_
body: Could you clarify on your Java memory settings for Tomcat? How many GB did you configure. Is your RDBMS running on the same machine? How much memory is configured there? Did you check CPU / RAM / Disk IO to narrow the problem? Is your Windows 8 machine swapping?

Best

JP

comments: author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi,

thank you for trying to help.

I did not do any memory settings for TOMCAT as there was no mention in setup or documentation that there is a need to.

My RDBMS is running on the same machine.

For memory and usage please see answer above.

Disk IO was not noticeable.

No, the Windows 8.1 machine does not seem to be swapping.

Thank you.  
Best Regards,  
Andreas.


author: Gonchik Tsymzhitov
body: Hi!

Could you provide a differences of your instances, please?

I mean, cpu, ram, disk and java changes.

Rdbms, connector and setenv.bat changes?

Cheers,

Gonchik Tsymzhitov

comments: author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi,

thank you for trying to help.  
I will try to answer best I can.

What differences do you mean?

There is only one confluence / TOMCAT / MySQL on the Win 8.1 PC.

While TOMCAT starts CPU usage is very high for the whole start procedure (roughly 1,5 minutes). I am on a 3.7 GHz i7 (8 cores).  
While TOMCAT starts CPU usage goes up to 50%, 75%, even spikes of 100% AND overboost (3.85 GHz) occur.  
RAM at that time stays around 3,2 GB (from 16 GB available)

When TOMCAT has finished starting CPU goes back to idle (1%), RAM stays at 3,2 GB.

RDBMS is MySQL command line client and MySQL workbench 8.0 CE.  
Both were introduced with the migration to MySQL.  
MySQL is 5.7.25, using confluence default of innodb.

What do you mean by connector?  
The database connector I installed is "mysql-connector-java-5.1.47-bin.jar"

I did not do any setenv.bat changes.

Hope this helps?  
Thank you again for looking into this.

Best Regards,  
Andreas.


author: Gonchik Tsymzhitov
body: Hi!

Thanks for that. It is enough to start. First of all, you have issue only for startup process, not for the working exist instance. If it is, related for works, you can increase Xms Xmx memory in setenv.bat. Unfortunately, last time I did it on Windows a 4-5 years ago, where it was possible to do in service parameters. But it the same as Linux (setenv.sh and setenv.bat ):)

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/memory-usage-and-requirements-130882.html>

If it is only related to the your startup, if is it really need to be focused right now?

1.5 min, it is ok, for large installations, if you install a few apps into Confluence, of course that apps will initialized and eat startup time.

Cheers,

Gonchik Tsymzhitov


author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi,

yes, the issue is only for start.

Today it took 2 min 40 s to start.

There are no apps in confluence.

Normally regarding if to focus on that or not I would agree with you.

In this case though the confluence instance will carry very important information and needs to be 110% reliable.

At the moment I am not convinced that my installation is "sane" and reliable because of the TOMCAT behaviour.

This is mainly because TOMCAT start was not noticeable at all (as a service) when I installed the trial.

This is why I am investigating and was asking for help regarding TOMCAT logs.

Would be great if someone here in the community had some experience with that and could point me to reading the right document.

The general TOMCAT documentation is a bit overwhelming I must admit - so I was hoping someone could eventually share some TOMCAT / confluence / log related info / knowhow.

Anyway, thank you for your help.  
Best Regards,  
Andreas.


author: Gonchik Tsymzhitov
body: Hi [@Andreas Bartels](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/2878734) ,

Thanks for that input.

As I see, you are restarting you app very often, if that correct?

Could you provide more detail info why do you restarting very often?

Cheers,

Gonchik Tsymzhitov


author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi,

correct, well noted.

This instance of confluence is running on a machine that will not operate every day.

So I will see a start (that is not a restart really) maybe every two or three days.

This is why I want it to start as a service. And quick (if possible) :-)

This is why I was enthusiastic when I did the trial. This went very well.

Sadly the production solution with the external database is worse (a lot).

Thank you again!  
Best Regards,  
Andreas.


author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi Gonchik,

as you were trying to be very helpful I just wanted you to know that I found a solution.

See here:

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Problems-installing-Confluence-on-Windows/qaq-p/1034371#M136233>

And thank you for evaluating the TOMCAT startup time in Windows in general.  
I am now convinced I managed to set it all up in a sane and safe way.

I think the installation will be reliable now.  
This is what's most important.

Thank you for your input.  
Best Regards,  
Andreas.


Tags: confluence-server

server