Confluence not starting with the error ClassNotFoundException
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
Summary
Confluence fails to start with a ClassNotFoundException.
The following appears in the catalina.out log file:
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Error: Could not find or load main class type
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: typeCause
This is generally caused by missing opening or closing tags ( "<" or ">") in place in the <Confluence Install Directory>/conf/server.xml file.
Example:
The closing tag ">" is missing at the end of the In below connector definition:
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<Connector port="8090" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443"
maxThreads="48" maxPostSize="16777216" minSpareThreads="10"
enableLookups="false" acceptCount="10" URIEncoding="UTF-8"
protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
scheme="https" secure="true" proxyName="test.test.com" proxyPort="443"/ The missing closing tag ">" will cause ClassNotFoundException. Therefore we need to add ">" like below:
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<Connector port="8090" connectionTimeout="20000" redirectPort="8443"
maxThreads="48" maxPostSize="16777216" minSpareThreads="10"
enableLookups="false" acceptCount="10" URIEncoding="UTF-8"
protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
scheme="https" secure="true" proxyName="test.test.com" proxyPort="443"/>Solution
Make sure your <Confluence Install Directory>/conf/server.xml file doesn't have any missing opening "<" or closing ">" tags as shown in the above example. Fix the missing tags, save the server.xml file, and start Confluence once again.
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