Confluence login page is blank
Asked by Aladin Munyanziza:

Confluence v7.2.2 on centOS seems to start fine and it has been working for quite sometime. I got a ticket from application team that they are getting a blank page and they are unable to login.

I deleted plugin cache ,temp folder and restart with no user installed plugins and I still can get to the home page even though I can see that confluence has started properly. Nothing in the log pointing to this issue.

Please assist.


Answers:
author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: [@Italo Qualisoni \[e-Core\]](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/538040)

Hi Italo ,Thanks for your help ,I decided to restore the instance from backup as I didn't want to spend more time troubleshooting it.

comments: author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Hi [@Aladin Munyanziza](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/947856) ,

Thanks for sharing, unfortunately our messages are missing here due this error

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Questions/Atlassian-Community-answers-are-not-shown-anymore/qaq-p/1432971>

I think your need to check linchpin-theme app that is not compatible with the new version of confluence.

Good luck on your next attempt, if you want some help you can contact [us](https://consulting.e-core.com/en/) (I work at e-Core a Atlassian partner company )


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: Thanks for the contacts.

My issue definitely has something to do with the linchpin plugin....I got an email from Linchpin support and I am not sure how they found out about this.


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Someone from their team replied this thread saying that they could help you.

Due some weird issue our old comments are not here anymore, yesterday, see below what they said :![lichipinScreenshot_1.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/103130i36A6D7FF73C937A1/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "lichipinScreenshot_1.png")


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Hey [@Aladin Munyanziza](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/947856) ,

Your issue is similar issue with this [question](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/getting-a-blank-page-for-confluence/qaq-p/409715) which the issue was the user that was running Confluence was incorrect or lacked permission;

You can start looking by both \<confluence home\>/logs/atlassian-confluence.log and \<confluence install\>/log/catalina.out for errors;

Share with us your progress so we can assist you as we can

comments: author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: Hi Italo,

Thanks for getting back to me. The permission are set properly to confluence user for both confluence install and home directory. Below I am sharing catalina.out log.

09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.269 WARNING \[main\] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.SetPropertiesRule.begin Match \[Server\] failed to set property \[debug\] to \[0\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.314 WARNING \[main\] org.apache.catalina.startup.SetAllPropertiesRule.begin \[SetAllPropertiesRule\]{Server/Service/Connector} Setting property 'debug' to '0' did not find a matching property.  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.330 WARNING \[main\] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.SetPropertiesRule.begin Match \[Server/Service/Engine\] failed to set property \[debug\] to \[0\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.334 WARNING \[main\] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.SetPropertiesRule.begin Match \[Server/Service/Engine/Host\] failed to set property \[debug\] to \[0\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.358 WARNING \[main\] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.SetPropertiesRule.begin Match \[Server/Service/Engine/Host/Context\] failed to set property \[debug\] to \[0\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.373 WARNING \[main\] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.SetPropertiesRule.begin Match \[Server/Service/Engine/Host/Context\] failed to set property \[debug\] to \[0\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.571 INFO \[main\] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.init Initializing ProtocolHandler \["http-nio-8090"\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.589 INFO \[main\] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.load Server initialization in \[396\] milliseconds  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.599 INFO \[main\] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.startInternal Starting service \[Tomcat-Standalone\]  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:20.599 INFO \[main\] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.startInternal Starting Servlet engine: \[Apache Tomcat/9.0.27\]  
SLF4J: Failed to load class "org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder".  
SLF4J: Defaulting to no-operation (NOP) logger implementation  
SLF4J: See <http://www.slf4j.org/codes.html#StaticLoggerBinder> for further details.  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:21.999 INFO \[Catalina-utility-2\] org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext.log 1 Spring WebApplicationInitializers detected on classpath  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:22.103 INFO \[Catalina-utility-2\] org.apache.jasper.servlet.TldScanner.scanJars At least one JAR was scanned for TLDs yet contained no TLDs. Enable debug logging for this logger for a complete list of JARs that were scanned but no TLDs were found in them. Skipping unneeded JARs during scanning can improve startup time and JSP compilation time.  
09-Jul-2020 14:31:22.292 INFO \[Catalina-utility-2\] org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext.log Initializing Spring DispatcherServlet 'dispatcher'  
2020-07-09 14:31:23,033 INFO \[Catalina-utility-1\] \[com.atlassian.confluence.lifecycle\] contextInitialized Starting Confluence 7.2.2 \[build 8401 based on commit hash b3e5d654c041312f7bfcd7d5f17e71f59e8621d2\] - synchrony version 3.1.0-master-0f086db5

Thanks for you help


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: I see that curl is returning the login screen but not in chrome or any other browser.


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: This behavior of blank page is appearing whether confluence is running behind the proxy or not .


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Hi [@Aladin Munyanziza](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/947856) ,

I don't se any issue in the catalina log, the application looks to be running on port 8090;

The fact that curl is returning a html means that Confluence is up and running.

It's strange that your browser display a blank page, in chrome you can inspect the network activity

<https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/network>

Then you can see if the browser request response and share with us


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: [@Italo Qualisoni \[e-Core\]](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/538040)

I am also confused by this issue as you can see in the browser request response,I am getting mostly 200 status code.

![HAR_Screenshot.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/102468iB804C4851C801D27/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "HAR_Screenshot.png")

![HAR_Screenshot.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/102467iE6182ECC19BA1B04/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "HAR_Screenshot.png")


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: It's strange that your html says that your login.vmd is for Confluence 6 (see the first line of your image**login.vmd for confluence (\<=6.14.0)** and you mention that you are running Confluence 7;

Can you confirm if the below files were modified in your instance?

* ${confluence_install}/confluence/login.vm
* ${confluence_install}/confluence/decorators/login.vmd

You can download a Confluence with the same version, unzip it and compare yours files with the original;


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: Interesting that it shows 6.14.0 while I upgraded to v7.2.2 not sure where that comes from . I will compare this with DEV which is at v7.2.2 as well as a new download and will update here.


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: [@Italo Qualisoni \[e-Core\]](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/538040) i have no idea how to explain this but there has been no change on these file and I see \<!-- LOGIN.VMD FOR CONFLUENCE 6 (\<=6.14.0) --\> even on an instance that is running just fine while being on v7.2.2

I compared the files and they all look the same.


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: [@Italo Qualisoni \[e-Core\]](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/538040) I looked into the code ,it shows v7.2.2 and not sure where the comment about v6.14 comes from as you can see in the login page code:

\<meta name="ajs-com.comalatech.workflow-stats-latestTaskAssigned" content="0" /\>\<meta name="ajs-com.comalatech.workflow-stats-**hostVersion" content="7.2.2"** /\>\<meta name="ajs-com.comalatech.workflow-stats-totalVersions" content="8591" /\>\<meta name="ajs-com.comalatech.workflow-stats-totalPages" content="4641" /\>\<meta name="ajs-com.comalatech.workflow-stats-version" content="6.9.0" /\>\<meta name="ajs-com.comalatech.workflow-stats-pluginLicenseSize" content="0" /\>  
\<meta name="ajs-public-signup-permitted" content="false"\>  
\<meta name="ajs-cq-is-admin" content="false"\>\<meta name="ajs-cq-is-anonymous" content="true"\>  


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Maybe you have an app that modifies the login page?

You can try to start your confluence with no apps and see what happens

    $ ./start-confluence.sh --disable-all-addons

See kb here [Temporarily disabling add-ons on start-up (Confluence 6.1 and later)](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-manually-remove-malfunctioning-add-ons-113705118.html#Howtomanuallyremovemalfunctioningadd-ons-Temporarilydisablingadd-onsonstart-up(Confluence6.1andlater))


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: That was my initial reaction and tried to restart confluence with disable all addons to no avail.


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Confluence stores all the apps in the database, so even if you delete the plugin folders the plugins will remain enabled.

Did you start Confluence with that flag on my previous comment?

    $ ./start-confluence.sh --disable-all-addons


author: Aladin Munyanziza
body: Yes, that's exactly what I did.


author: Italo Qualisoni [e-Core]
body: Hi [@Aladin Munyanziza](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/947856) ,

This is very odd behavior indeed, in your screenshot I was able to see that there is an CSS from an app that changes Confluence behavior [Linchpin](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1216579/linchpin-theme?hosting=server&tab=overview); See in our previous attachment with the network inspection that some request are from linchpin-theme.

Can you do this KB [How to clear Confluence plugins cache](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-clear-confluence-plugins-cache-297664846.html) and start Confluence with this command to disable the linchipin-theme app?

    ./start-confluence.sh --disable-addons=net.seibertmedia.confluence.plugins.linchpin-theme

If you still see linchpin in the network inspection, i means that the app is still being loaded, it's is possible to disable the app from the database too, but let's see how it goes;

Also you can reach [Atlassian Support](https://support.atlassian.com/contact/) so they can have the logs and troubleshoot closer with you, I'm using my spare time to help you and you might need more attention/help with this.


author: Robert Krause
body: Hello [@Aladin Munyanziza](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/947856) ,

I am sorry to hear you seem to have challenges with one of our apps. Can you please head over to our Service Desk and report this issue? This way our support team can have a look at this and we can hopefully resolve this quickly.

<https://seibert.biz/help>

Best regards,  
Robert Krause  
Linchpin Support


Tags: atl-curate

confluence-server

server