Confluence using PostgreSQL fails to startup with "Server name validation failed: certificate for host" error
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 may experience issues connecting with the PostgreSQL database if it's not properly configured. In our database setup guide, we don't explicitly mention how to configure the database with a certificate as this is detailed by the certifying authority (CA), however, it impacts the application usability so we are providing steps to resolve this specific error.
The following message is seen when accessing Confluence:
Environment
Confluence Server and Data Center
PostgreSQL with SSL
Diagnosis
Confluence doesn't start properly and we see an error message in the browser. To investigate the error, we analyze the atlassian-confluence.logfile, in this log, we will find database errors related to the issue:
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2020-12-14 06:27:35,640 ERROR [Catalina-utility-1] [org.postgresql.ssl.PGjdbcHostnameVerifier] verify Server name validation failed: certificate for host confluence.wiki.com dNSName entries subjectAltName, but none of them match. Assuming server name validation failed
2020-12-14 06:27:36,041 ERROR [Catalina-utility-1] [confluence.impl.health.DefaultHealthCheckRunner] logEvent Database connection failed
2020-12-14 06:27:36,043 ERROR [Catalina-utility-1] [confluence.impl.health.DefaultHealthCheckRunner] logEvent Confluence failed to establish a connection to your database.
This could be because:
- Your database isn't running
- The configuration of your confluence.cfg.xml file is incorrect (user, password, or database URL etc.)
- There is a network issue between Confluence and your database (e.g. firewall, database doesn't allow remote access etc.)
There are several other solutions you can try, review our documentation and see what works for you.The error above indicates that the certificate used in PostgreSQL does not include the confluence.wiki.com domain name and due to this, the application won't be able to connect to the database and will fail to startup.
Cause
The certificate used in PostgreSQL does not include the confluence.wiki.com domain name.
Solution
We recommend working with your certifying authority to generate new certificates that correspond with the domain name of your server presented in the error.
As contacting the CA may take some time and we need to start Confluence right away we can tell Confluence to ignore the server name validation error by following the steps below:
Stop Confluence if it is running
Edit <confluence_home>/confluence.cfg.xml file
Find the line that starts with <property name="hibernate.connection.url">
Append the following to the JDBC connection string:
1?ssl=true&sslmode=require&sslfactory=org.postgresql.ssl.NonValidatingFactorySave the resulting file
Start Confluence
This change to the JDBC connection string tells Confluence to use an SSL factory to create a connection that does not validate the domain name, which would allow us to connect to the database.
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