Cannot Upgrade Confluence 3.5 or Later Using the Confluence 4.0.x Installer
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Symptoms
When upgrading Confluence using the installer, the following message appears once it goes through the Existing installation directory step:
Symptom 1
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Sorry, we are unable to automatically upgrade your Confluence installation as is not version 3.5 (or later)
For more information, see our documentation at the following URL: http://docs.atlassian.com/confluence/docs-40/Upgrading+Confluence
Finishing installation ...
Symptom 2
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The home directory cannot be a sub-directory of the installation directory. Aborting the upgrade...
Finishing installation ...
Cause
For Symptom 1
The installer identifies the current version of Confluence from <Confluence Installation>/confluence/META-INF/maven/com.atlassian.confluence/confluence-webapp/pom.properties. In certain cases, the pom.properties can be corrupted, misnamed, or does not exist. Hence, the installer keeps failing. There is an improvement request to make the installer to detect this better at INST-477.
For Symptom 2
The Confluence Home and other important directories cannot be a sub-directory of the Confluence Installation Directory. We recommend that you do not do such thing to prevent information from being accidentally lost during major operations (e.g. backing up and restoring instances).
Resolution
For Symptom 1
Ensure there is a valid pom.properties file in <Confluence Installation>/confluence/META-INF/maven/com.atlassian.confluence/confluence-webapp. The content of the file should look similar to this:
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#Generated by Maven
#Tue Jul 19 21:50:41 CDT 2011
version=3.5.9
groupId=com.atlassian.confluence
artifactId=confluence-webapp ℹ️ This may also happen if you are using a milestone/beta/rc release. In this case, change the version to a stable version.
For Symptom 2
Separate your Confluence home directory to somewhere else as described here
Point
confluence.homeinconfluence-install/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.propertiesto the new location of Confluence home directoryRestart Confluence to ensure Confluence can get up and running without any issue
Rerun the upgrade wizard
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