Missing attachments and images after license expired has been renewed.
Asked by calsaviour low:

Hello,

Recently my 30 day trial license has expired.

I did the following

a) Generate a new license for confluence.

The existing file based images and attachment are no longer available.

Any idea how to recover to attachments and images?

Thanks

Calvin


Answers:
author: Igor M.
body: Hello,

In standalone server version of Confluence your attachments are stored in **\<confluence home\>/attachments** directory. These should not have disappeared due to expired license. They can however disappear if you make major configuration change, like server migration, or change home directory path.

* Check if you can see attachments on pages from **\*\*\* \> Attachments** menu in top right corner
* Check your **\<confluence home\>/logs/atlassian-confluence.log** for any missing attachments errors, these should also give you a long path to the missing file, so check if file is present in the path.
* Try clearing plug-ins cache and re-indexing your instance from scratch

> ```
> Shutdown Confluence,
> Delete bellow directories:
> <confluence-home>/index/
> <confluence-home>/journal/
> <confluence-home>/bundled-plugins
> <confluence-home>/plugins-cache
> <confluence-home>/plugins-osgi-cache
> <confluence-home>/plugins-temp
> <confluence-home>/bundled-plugins_language
> Start Confluence
> Navigate to Confluence Admin > Content Indexing and click "Rebuild"
> ```

* Follow this KB, especially the first part that will allow to determine if attachments are in fact missing [How to resolve missing attachments in Confluence](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-resolve-missing-attachments-in-confluence-201761.html)
* Finally if you are in fact missing attachments from **\<confluence home\>/attachments**, you can restore the contents of this folder from backup.

Let me know how it goes

Regards,

Igor

comments: author: calsaviour low
body: Hi Igor,

Thanks for the steps.

Check the attachments and images are missing.

Need to do a restore content to see if it works.

Cheers

Calvin


author: Igor M.
body: You might need to do a re-index after restoring attachments to make sure these are picked.

Let me know if you have any questions

Regards,

Igor


author: calsaviour low
body: I see.

The backup i have was done manually instead of using the confluence backup feature.

So this is the predicament i am facing. Below are the steps i am thinking to run

1. Create backup for current confluence (using the confluence feature)

2. Manually restore the attachment directory using my own backup through the command terminal

3. Restore the backup in Step 1.

4. Then run the re-index.

Would this cause any issues?


author: Igor M.
body: Nope should work fine, you only need to copy attachment folder and overwrite the one on the server, so even if you just had a copy of this folder somewhere, it would be enough.

having your own manual backup is definitely good and recommended once your instance grown beyond few thousand pages, this removes constrains on Confluence resources associated with built in backup feature.

So action plan:

* Backup your current Confluence home directory and DB
* Copy \<Confluence home\>/attachments from your backup and overwrite/merge with the one you have on server
* Reindex Confluence from General Configuration \> Indexing

hope this helps

Regards,

Igor


Tags: confluence-server

server