Confluence Is Unable To Fetch Data From Crowd When Following "Here Be Dragons" Instructions
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 throws a NullPointerException when trying to:
List Group members via the Confluence Admin console,
Creating a Space,
Changing the Confluence license,
Confluence will show a stack trace with the following messages in the bottom:
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Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.atlassian.confluence.util.ReadOnlyLicenseCalculator.handleExecutionFailure(ReadOnlyLicenseCalculator.java:106)
...
... 160 more
Caused by: java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:232)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:91)
at com.atlassian.confluence.util.ReadOnlyLicenseCalculator.getNumberOfLicensedUsers(ReadOnlyLicenseCalculator.java:81)
... 170 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.atlassian.confluence.user.DefaultUserAccessor.getUsersWithConfluenceAccess(DefaultUserAccessor.java:274)
at com.atlassian.confluence.user.DefaultUserAccessor.getUsersWithConfluenceAccessAsList(DefaultUserAccessor.java:658)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
...Cause
Unknown. Atlassian has not been able to reproduce the issue locally, and the issue is only reported by a very low minority, however it is clear that using the Directory created during the Setup Wizard to store data for non-administrator users is causing the problem.
Resolution
Please try the following workaround:
Create a new Internal Directory called TestDirectory (Crowd console >> Directories).
Create a user inside the Directory with the same name as the one already existent: charlie (Crowd console >> Users)
Create group confluence-users and confluence-administrators inside the new Directory (Crowd console >> Groups)
Add user charlie to both Groups.
Assign the new Directory to the Confluence Application (Crowd console >> Applications >> confluence >> Directories tab) and set Allow all to Authenticate to true.
Unassign the old directory crowd from the confluence Application (Crowd console >> Applications >> confluence >> Directories tab >> Remove)
Test the authentication with the new user (Crowd console >> Applications >> confluence >> Authentication Test)
Restart Confluence
Login with charlie and try to perform the operation that was not working
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