Java Question
Asked by Crayge Brown:

Probably a stupid question, but...

Does Confluence only run on the latest version of Java, and is it stable on 1.6.19?

We use that old version of Java for other, business-critical, programs so need to know if this will run alongside before committing.

Thanks


Answers:
author: Peter Van de Voorde
body: Hi Andy,

Which version of Confluence are you using?

Java 6 is supported up to version 5.1 but starting with version 5.2 it will no longer be supported.

As Alex points out you can install a new JVM (Java 7) in a different directory and just update your setenv.sh or setenv.bat (change all mentions of the Java 6 location to the Java 7 location) file in the bin directory of your Confluence installation directory.

Best regard,

Peter

comments: author: Crayge Brown
body: Hi Peter,

We're not actually using Confluence yet. I was tasked with finding out if this would run on our current setup.

I think that once the software guys get back from hols/site visits, we could probably go through the JVM set up....but it's not something I'm familiar with.

Regards

Andy


author: Alex Perez
body: Why not install a separate JVM only for confluence? You can always install many JVM, and modify start script / registry / env variables to allow each program pick its JVM.

Confluence installer ships its own Java, and its unpacked in a subdir of c:\\program files\\confluence or equivalent. so ... why other programs will run with this new JVM?

HTH

comments: author: Crayge Brown
body: Thanks Alex, but I'm more of a hardware guy than software, so I'm not too sure I'd be confident enough to do what you suggest.


author: Alex Perez
body: By default if you install confluence from windows installer or standalone pack, it will provide its own JVM and will not use other JVMs previously installed.

But, take the backup/snapshot as usual if you dont want to take unnecesary risks on your bussiness-critical apps.

HTH


author: Crayge Brown
body: That sounds good, but all of our client machines are running 6.19 too.....Will that make a big difference?


author: Alex Perez
body: Between 1.6.0_19 and another 1.6.0_XX version there are only bugfixes. They may o may not impact you applications depending on where are that bugs and what your applications are doing. You need to have bad luck to hit one of these bugs, but it's possible.

In the other hand, your vendor (Atlassian) ships confluence with 1.7.x, and the next release will work only with 1.7 JVM (not 1.6 at all) as Peter stated.

I recommend you to use 1.7 because is the version supplied by the vendor, and the installation is easier (you dont have to change anything about jvm). Just guessing ... maybe your client machines are running 6.19 because they defined some kind of policy to use that exact version. This "policy" should be reviewed if they want to install 5.2+ some day in the future.

Confluence 5.1 likely works with 1.6.0_19 as well, if you are interested in using that version.

HTH


author: Crayge Brown
body: Thanks again, Alex.

We use 1.6 across the clients due to a software install that ONLY runs up to that version. I'm trying to push to see if we can get that moved on, but would seem that 5.1 would be the way to go for now....until the other business critical software is updated.

Regards

Andy


Tags: confluence-administration

java

jrjc