Synchrony not working after setting up SSL
Asked by Richard Crowe:

I am using Confluence 8.9.0 running as a service on a Microsoft Server 2022. The collaborative editing worked fine when initially set up using HTTP:// Once I set up HTTPS:// everything worked except the collaborative editing. With it on the edit page never presents. With it off the edit page comes right up.

I have read that Synchrony does not work with SSL and SSL must be terminated at tomcat but I can find no instructions on how to do this.

I followed all the instructions at:

[Running Confluence Over SSL or HTTPS \| Confluence Data Center 8.9 \| Atlassian Documentation](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/running-confluence-over-ssl-or-https-161203.html)

Does anyone know how to fix this?


Answers:
author: Jim Knepley - ReleaseTEAM
body: I assume you've already set up https by creating an encrypted connector in server.xml. That's all that's necessary from a "termination" standpoint.

I think this block in server.xml enables the internal proxy:  

```
<Context path="/${confluence.context.path}/synchrony-proxy" docBase="../synchrony-proxy"
         reloadable="false" useHttpOnly="true">
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.StuckThreadDetectionValve" threshold="60"/>
</Context>
```

If you've got that configured, look in the logs for messages related to running out of heap space, failures connecting to a port, or PKIX path building failing. With those messages, we should be able to figure it out.

comments: author: Richard Crowe
body: The only difference is the path. Your example above has a / at the beginning. I did not touch this part of the server.xml so it is at the default from the install.

\<Context path="${confluence.context.path}/synchrony-proxy" docBase="../synchrony-proxy"  
reloadable="false" useHttpOnly="true"\>  
\<Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.StuckThreadDetectionValve" threshold="60"/\>  
\</Context\>

Probably why I get the warning "WARNING \[main\] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.setPath A context path must either be an empty string or start with a '/' and do not end with a '/'. The path \[${confluence.context.path}/synchrony-proxy\] does not meet these criteria and has been changed to \[/${confluence.context.path}/synchrony-proxy\]"

I do not see any of the errors you reference. The only error I have is "ERROR \[Catalina-utility-1\] \[atlassian.config.bootstrap.DefaultAtlassianBootstrapManager\] getTestDatabaseConnection Could not successfully test your database: " which is due to the SQL instance being on a different port than 1433. Not sure why tomcat is trying to use the default when I configured for a different port.

Not sure what else to look at and really don't want to frontend with IIS.


author: Richard Crowe
body: Added the / and no longer get warning when starting service. Still getting error trying to edit page with Collaboration turned on.

![Screenshot 2024-07-12 115144.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/335324i3CDB6B797B0D6A0E/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Screenshot 2024-07-12 115144.png")


author: Jim Knepley - ReleaseTEAM
body: I don't want to dismiss the error about port 1433 since Synchrony interacts with the database. As far as I know, Confluence only has one JDBC connection string setting, so maybe look at the synchrony logs in the local home directory and see if there are any errors there.

Another thought:

Modern browsers have a developer mode, usually accessed by pressing F12. If you open developer mode and look at the *console* and *network* tabs, you might see some errors. Those might be interesting as well.

Hopefully Confluence will eventually give us a hint where to look for a misconfiguration.

Are you running Confluence in a cluster with a reverse proxy acting as a load balancer?


Tags: confluence-data-center

confluence-server

data-center

server