Confluence will not start but Jira did
Asked by Josh Kirby:

I have a server that was running Jira and Confluence, the server got a disk full and VMWare froze it up. Now with everything restored with backups I am having trouble starting confluence. Jira starts fine. I have tried to start confluence as a service (what it was before) and also using the bash script.

Any ideas what is happening? I use confluence a lot and would really like to get it back up and running ASAP

Here is the output of when I try to run the startup script:

To run Confluence in the foreground, start the server with start-confluence.sh -fg  
executing using dedicated user: confluence  
If you encounter issues starting up Confluence, please see the Installation guide at <http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+Installation+Guide>

Server startup logs are located in /opt/atlassian/confluence/logs/catalina.out  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Using Java: /opt/atlassian/confluence/jre//bin/java  
\[Fatal Error\] server.xml:54:54: The value of attribute "keystorePass" associated with an element type "Connector" must not contain the '\<' character.  
\[Fatal Error\] server.xml:54:54: The value of attribute "keystorePass" associated with an element type "Connector" must not contain the '\<' character.  
The value of attribute "keystorePass" associated with an element type "Connector" must not contain the '\<' character.  
\[Fatal Error\] server.xml:54:54: The value of attribute "keystorePass" associated with an element type "Connector" must not contain the '\<' character.  
The value of attribute "keystorePass" associated with an element type "Connector" must not contain the '\<' character.  
2018-08-06 11:50:47,085 INFO \[main\] \[atlassian.confluence.bootstrap.SynchronyProxyWatchdog\] The Confluence context path is empty. No further action is required.  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Using CATALINA_BASE: /opt/atlassian/confluence  
Using CATALINA_HOME: /opt/atlassian/confluence  
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/atlassian/confluence/temp  
Using JRE_HOME: /opt/atlassian/confluence/jre/  
Using CLASSPATH: /opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/atlassian/confluence/bin/tomcat-juli.jar  
Using CATALINA_PID: /opt/atlassian/confluence/work/catalina.pid  
Existing PID file found during start.  
Removing/clearing stale PID file.  
Tomcat started.

EServer startup log:

29-May-2018 20:10:43.539 INFO \[http-nio-8090-exec-10\] com.sun.jersey.server.impl.application.WebApplicationImpl._initiate Initiating Jersey application, version 'Jersey: 1.19.4 05/24/2017 03:20 PM'  
29-May-2018 20:10:51.866 INFO \[http-nio-8090-exec-3\] com.sun.jersey.server.impl.application.WebApplicationImpl._initiate Initiating Jersey application, version 'Jersey: 1.19.4 05/24/2017 03:20 PM'  
29-May-2018 20:11:23.087 INFO \[http-nio-8090-exec-3\] com.sun.jersey.server.impl.application.WebApplicationImpl._initiate Initiating Jersey application, version 'Jersey: 1.19.4 05/24/2017 03:20 PM'  
29-May-2018 20:16:38.279 INFO \[http-nio-8090-exec-3\] com.sun.jersey.server.impl.application.WebApplicationImpl._initiate Initiating Jersey application, version 'Jersey: 1.19.4 05/24/2017 03:20 PM'  
Error: Could not find or load main class value  
Error: Could not find or load main class value  
Error: Could not find or load main class value


Answers:
author: Timothy
body: > \[Fatal Error\] server.xml:54:54: The value of attribute "keystorePass" associated with an element type "Connector" must not contain the '\<' character.

Your server.xml is borked at line 54.

comments: author: Josh Kirby
body: Okay but what would cause that if I had not gone in and changed anything other than the system rebooting


author: Timothy
body: Changes to the server.xml will only take effect after an application restart. It was changed one way or another.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Someone editing it.

That file is only read when starting up, so someone may have changed it weeks or months ago, but you only found a problem when restarting Confluence the next time.


author: Josh Kirby
body: [@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/781454) I am the only one with access to the server.   

[@Timothy](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/781465) I have not changed anything since then, I had set and forgot it for 3 weeks since I last rebooted it and was working fine until this reboot.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Well, the file is broken and needs fixing, no matter how it got that way. Could the loss of disk space have corrupted it?


Tags: confluence-server

server