Page editor shows up a blank screen regardless of the Collaborative Editing settings
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
You can open any Confluence page for visualization. However, when you try to edit it, the Page Editor never loads, instead showing a blank screen and a loading icon.
This error happens regardless of whether Collaborative Editing is enabled or disabled.
Diagnosis
Application logs are flooded with the following exceptions:
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2020-05-13 22:20:09,529 ERROR [https-jsse-nio-8443-exec-1] [[Standalone].[localhost].[/].[noop]] log Servlet.service() for servlet [noop] in context with path [] threw exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.atlassian.confluence.servlet.rewrite.CachedRewriteMatch.execute(CachedRewriteMatch.java:32)
at org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.RewrittenUrlClass.doRewrite(RewrittenUrlClass.java:61)
at org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.RuleChain.handleRewrite(RuleChain.java:171)
at org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.RuleChain.doRules(RuleChain.java:145)
at org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriter.processRequest(UrlRewriter.java:92)
at org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriteFilter.doFilter(UrlRewriteFilter.java:389)Tomcat logs show the following exceptions:
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13-May-2020 22:20:10.308 SEVERE [https-jsse-nio-8443-exec-19] org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext.log Servlet.init() for servlet [dispatcher] threw exception
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'defaultServletHandlerMapping' defined in org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration: Bean instantiation via factory method failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Failed to instantiate [org.springframework.web.servlet.HandlerMapping]: Factory method 'defaultServletHandlerMapping' threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to locate the default servlet for serving static content. Please set the 'defaultServletName' property explicitly.
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ConstructorResolver.instantiate(ConstructorResolver.java:627)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ConstructorResolver.instantiateUsingFactoryMethod(ConstructorResolver.java:456)
...
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Failed to instantiate [org.springframework.web.servlet.HandlerMapping]: Factory method 'defaultServletHandlerMapping' threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to locate the default servlet for serving static content. Please set the 'defaultServletName' property explicitly.
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.SimpleInstantiationStrategy.instantiate(SimpleInstantiationStrategy.java:185)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ConstructorResolver.instantiate(ConstructorResolver.java:622)
... 36 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to locate the default servlet for serving static content. Please set the 'defaultServletName' property explicitly.
at org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.DefaultServletHttpRequestHandler.setServletContext(DefaultServletHttpRequestHandler.java:110)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer.enable(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer.java:83)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer.enable(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer.java:69)
...
org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$27c19b6e.CGLIB$defaultServletHandlerMapping$35(<generated>)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$27c19b6e$$FastClassBySpringCGLIB$$f99b4153.invoke(<generated>)
at org.springframework.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invokeSuper(MethodProxy.java:244)
at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassEnhancer$BeanMethodInterceptor.intercept(ConfigurationClassEnhancer.java:363)
at org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$27c19b6e.defaultServletHandlerMapping(<generated>) Capturing a HAR file while opening the Page Editor will show many requests receiving
HTTP 500 - Internal Server Error
Cause
Tomcat couldn't load the default servlet due to an error in the syntax of the web.xml file.
Solution
There are two web.xml files in Confluence. You'll need to check for errors in both of them
<CONFLUENCE_INSTALL>/conf/web.xml
<CONFLUENCE_INSTALL>/confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml
If you recently configured Confluence to run using SSL and added a security constraint to redirect all URLs to HTTPS, ensure that the <security-constraint> XML tag was placed in the correct location - before the </web-app> tag.
If you can't identify the error, you can always replace your current web.xml with the default web.xml file from a fresh Confluence install of the same version.
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