Confluence fails to start on port 80 or 443 with "Permission denied" error in logs
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
Problem
Confluence fails to start up, and a "Failed to initialize component" error shows in the catalina.out followed by a "permission denied" cause:
catalina.out
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12-Mar-2019 16:44:49.905 SEVERE [main] org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.handleSubClassException Failed to initialize component [Connector[HTTP/1.1-80]]
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Caused by: java.net.SocketException: Permission deniedCause
The error above indicates the Tomcat cannot start the server to accept connections due to permissions issues. [Connector[HTTP/1.1-80]] indicates Confluence is attempting to start on port 80, which is often restricted for security purposes on many operating systems.
Resolution
There are two options for resolving this:
Run Confluence on a non-restricted port, such as 8090 (the default port for Confluence)
Install a reverse proxy to redirect requests from port 80 and 443 to the internal server. For recommended reverse proxy configurations, see the articles linked from Proxy and HTTPS setup for Confluence.
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