Confluence configuration Spring Application context has not been set

Question

I tried to install confluence on my own ubuntu server, but always failed. The error is:

com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference$InitializationException: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Spring Application context has not been set
at com.atlassian.util.concurrent.LazyReference.getInterruptibly(LazyReference.java:149)

caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Spring Application context has not been set
at com.atlassian.spring.container.SpringContainerContext.getComponent(SpringContainerContext.java:48)

I saw some solutions in the jira confluence forum saying try to fix the permission of installed directory and home directory. I tried but failed again. How can I fix the problem.

Answer 1

In my case the issue was corrupted confluence.cfg.xml file (contains DB connection stings and other settings). The file size 0 bytes.

I would suggest to use a VM to create a new installation and borrow confluence.cfg.xml from that installation.

It's embarrassing that this behavior has been allowed to exist for nearly 7 years in a commercial product. This is basic stuff...

I wish that was on instructions somewhere: Make single backup copy of confluence.cfg.xml immediately before any writes to it by the application. Application should be able to restore from backed up copy if it gets corrupted.