Problems installing Confluence on Windows
Asked by Andreas Bartels:

Hi folks,

just in case someone is tempted by the Starter Licence and wants to give it a try - might be interesting to read what lies ahead of you from someone who did, me.

Don't get me wrong - I also run a commercial site licenced confluence server which I administrate for another company.

I just wanted to try confluence for a small task and see how it does.  
So the Starter Licence seemed just about right for that purpose.

Intent: Run confluence on a standalone Windows PC in a small (5 machines) network, make confluence available to that team.

So here we go:

1) downloaded atlassian-confluence-6.14.2-x64  
2) installed trial on a win8 i7 machine  
3) installs just fine, runs like a charm, and runs as a SERVICE, no problems.  
4) I deal with the first problem, reset base URL from localhost:8090 to 192.168.your.IP:8090 as usual - works  
5) I enter some content, all runs fine  
6) confluence health check tells me I am using an internal (H2) database and that for production environment I should migrate to a proper external database. Understood. Reasonable as it is.  
<https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/embedded-h2-database-145098285.html>  
7) I licence Starter - for most of the time I'll use this wiki alone, later there might be 2 - maybe 3 other users - at max. - so that seems like a neat offer - thanks Atlassian.  
8) I enter the licence  
9) I begin migration of the instance to the new database by walking through  
<https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/migrating-to-another-database-148867.html>  
10) The two instances constantly get in each others way while I migrate, I never know on which of the two I am though I adhere to proper instance separation according to the above  
11) I select MySQL 5.7 - this is a supported version, so I pick it. Okay, my fault you might say. <https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/supported-platforms-207488198.html>  
12) Setting up MySQL works ok, so long as I do not alter it. As soon as I begin entering the proper \[mysqld\] options according to  
<https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/database-setup-for-mysql-128747.html>  
the nightmare begins.  
13) MySQL becomes slow, unresponsive, stops, doesn't work.  
14) I resort to setting the options through the GUI of MySQL workbench  
15) This seems to do the trick  
16) The new confluence instance (separated) connects to the database just fine, re-importing my content works well.  
17) I deinstall the old instance (the one with the trial database H2 type) - seems like the reasonable thing to do to sort the problems the two instances have while co-existing  
18) Soon I find the option to start Confluence as a service is gone.  
19) No way getting it back. Tried reinstall, re-import, everything, no way.  
20) Starting confluence manually gives me an ugly TOMCAT Window that at least is telling me why my confluence stopped working, because of the MOST STUPID CONFLUENCE SETUP FLAW i ever encountered:  

Sat Mar 16 13:12:59 CET 2019 WARN: Establishing SSL connection without server's  
identity verification is not recommended. According to MySQL 5.5.45+, 5.6.26+ an  
d 5.7.6+ requirements SSL connection must be established by default if explicit  
option isn't set. For compliance with existing applications not using SSL the ve  
rifyServerCertificate property is set to 'false'. You need either to explicitly  
disable SSL by setting useSSL=false, or set useSSL=true and provide truststore f  
or server certificate verification.

After reading through the problems others had I know what to do:

21) Find confluence.cfg.xml in $home\\Program Files\\Atlassian\\Application Data\\Confluence  
22) Add ?useSSL=false in this way to: \<property name="hibernate.connection.url"\>jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/confluence?useSSL=false\</property\> where it was simply missing  
23) Everything works after that.  
24) Results:

25) TOMCAT takes 10 minutes at least to start, before that ridicoulus amount of time there is no way of accessing the wiki  
25) Still no way of starting confluence as a service

26) reading through the documentation of how to get a feature back (service start) that in the trial instance comes out of the box I begin to realize what's wrong here.  
27) Me. I am fed up.

28) Sorry folks. This is not what I expect in 2019. Even for small money.  
29) Maybe - just Maybe - when I have recovered I might try to read even more to help sort this - as I believe TOMCAT is not such a bad piece of software to cause all this.

30) Let's see if this Odyssey might lead somewhere still.


Answers:
author: Andreas Bartels
body: The answer is simple: [RTFM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM)

Read this 1) <https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf614/confluence-installation-and-upgrade-guide-965546562.html>

Read this 2) <https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf614/installing-confluence-on-windows-965546576.html>

There in the middle, read: "Do you want to run Confluence as a Windows Service?"  
Then click on: "[Tell me more...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf614/installing-confluence-on-windows-965546576.html#)"

Find this:

**If you choose to run Confluence as a service:**

* You must **run the installer as administrator** to be able to install Confluence as a service.

--------------------------------------------------

I must admit: It's all there.  
All I can complain about (and I do complain about it!): It's hidden. Too much.

So what did I do wrong?  
I somehow managed to do the first install with Administrator privileges and the second one without. Please don't ask me how I was able to do it. I must have been distracted too much by the other problems to notice this simple one.

Of course the start of TOMCAT still takes an awful lot of time (roughly 3 minutes), but that is not so much of a pain if you can just switch on the machine and log on after the coffee because you know it will have been started as a service by then and it'll be up and running by the time you sat down and logged on.

The rest of the quirks you have to get around (see above my numbered listing) are still valid.  
And this here is the final quirk.

All I can do is suggest to amend the installer - telling the user something like:  
"You are not running this installer as Administrator - You will not be able to install confluence as a service"

Just my cents.  
Bye, Andreas.


author: JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_
body: Hi,

what I don't understand is

10) The two instances constantly get in each others way while I migrate, I never know on which of the two I am though I adhere to proper instance separation according to the above

Why are there two instances of Confluence on the same machine?!? When did you install these? Why are they running at the same time?

Have you got any experience with MySQL? I assume you're not running MySQL on the same machine, are you?

Tomcat is a java application server used by many service providers / websites / shops in the internet. Confluence is an application running on top of Tomcat.

I still don't get one thing: You are administering a production Confluence site?!? My experience with the windows installer pack is pretty much straight forward \& flawless.

By the way: Windows 8 is not a supported operating system as there is no support available from Microsoft anymore.

Best regards,

JP

comments: author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi,

\>\> Why are there two instances of Confluence on the same machine?!?  
Thats the standard situation when you migrate from trial to production server.

\>\> When did you install these?  
A few days ago. The second three days after the first.

\>\> Why are they running at the same time?  
That happened unintentionally.  
Trial installed itself out of the box as a service.  
Each reboot brings it back to life.  

\>\> Have you got any experience with MySQL?  
Not much.

\>\> I assume you're not running MySQL on the same machine, are you?  
Yes I am. Why not?

\>\> Confluence is an application running on top of Tomcat  
Thanks for trying to explain but I am well aware of that.

\>\> You are administering a production Confluence site?!?  
Yep. But that one runs on Linux. Like that a lot more than my Windows experience so far.

\>\> Windows 8 is not a supported operating system  
Sorry, this is not correct.  
Please refer to:  
<https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf614/supported-platforms-965546668.html>

\>\> there is no support available from Microsoft anymore.  
Sorry, this is not correct.  
Windows 8.1 extended support ends on 10th of January 2023.

Was any of the above helpful?  
...  

Rgds., Andreas.


author: JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_
body: No


author: Gonchik Tsymzhitov
body: Hi!

Thanks for that feedback.

So what's the issue do you have ?

Have you tried docker for that use case?

Cheers,

Gonchik Tsymzhitov

comments: author: Andreas Bartels
body: Hi,

thank you for pointing me to that.  
Did not know yet that such a wrapped up package solution exists.  
Will read through that.  

Apart from that - as I am almost there - at the moment I try to get an idea why TOMCAT is ill on my installation.

I've put up a separate question for that.

Thanks, Andreas.


Tags: confluence-server

server