Confluence throws 'Application failed to authenticate' after upgrading to 3.5 with Crowd User Management
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
Confluence is integrated with Crowd
After the upgrade, Crowd users are unable to login to Confluence
The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:
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2011-03-28 13:23:45,078 ERROR [QuartzScheduler_Worker-4] [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingDirectoryPoller] pollChanges Error occurred while refreshing the cache for directory [ 4161537 ].
com.atlassian.crowd.exception.OperationFailedException: com.atlassian.crowd.exception.InvalidAuthenticationException: Application failed to authenticate
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.RemoteCrowdDirectory.searchUsers(RemoteCrowdDirectory.java:329)
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.ldap.cache.RemoteDirectoryCacheRefresher.findAllRemoteUsers(RemoteDirectoryCacheRefresher.java:48)
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.ldap.cache.RemoteDirectoryCacheRefresher.synchroniseAllUsers(RemoteDirectoryCacheRefresher.java:67)
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.ldap.cache.AbstractCacheRefresher.synchroniseAll(AbstractCacheRefresher.java:36)
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteDirectory.synchroniseCache(DbCachingRemoteDirectory.java:642)
at com.atlassian.crowd.manager.directory.DirectorySynchroniserHelperImpl.synchronise(DirectorySynchroniserHelperImpl.java:80)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.springframework.aop.support.AopUtils.invokeJoinpointUsingReflection(AopUtils.java:304)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.invokeJoinpoint(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:182)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:149)
at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor.invoke(TransactionInterceptor.java:106)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:171)
at org.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy.invoke(JdkDynamicAopProxy.java:204)
at $Proxy13.synchronise(Unknown Source)
at com.atlassian.crowd.manager.directory.DirectorySynchroniserImpl.synchronise(DirectorySynchroniserImpl.java:59)
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingDirectoryPoller.pollChanges(DbCachingDirectoryPoller.java:50)
at com.atlassian.crowd.manager.directory.monitor.poller.DirectoryPollerJobBean.executeInternal(DirectoryPollerJobBean.java:29)
at org.springframework.scheduling.quartz.QuartzJobBean.execute(QuartzJobBean.java:86)
at org.quartz.core.JobRunShell.run(JobRunShell.java:199)
at com.atlassian.confluence.schedule.quartz.ConfluenceQuartzThreadPool$1.run(ConfluenceQuartzThreadPool.java:14)
at org.quartz.simpl.SimpleThreadPool$WorkerThread.run(SimpleThreadPool.java:549)
Caused by: com.atlassian.crowd.exception.InvalidAuthenticationException: Application failed to authenticate
at com.atlassian.crowd.integration.rest.service.RestExecutor$MethodExecutor.throwError(RestExecutor.java:418)
at com.atlassian.crowd.integration.rest.service.RestExecutor$MethodExecutor.andReceive(RestExecutor.java:300)
at com.atlassian.crowd.integration.rest.service.RestCrowdClient.searchUsers(RestCrowdClient.java:462)
at com.atlassian.crowd.directory.RemoteCrowdDirectory.searchUsers(RemoteCrowdDirectory.java:315)
... 23 more
Cause
Confluence is unable to talk to Crowd due to incorrect information in the cwd_directory_attribute table within the Confluence database. This is possibly due to malicious content in the crowd.properties when upgrading or failure in reading the file.
Workaround
Modify the values specified in the cwd_directory_attribute table within the Confluence database manually. The values must match all the values specified in Confluence's crowd.properties.
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