Problem

Collaborative Editing is enabled, and the Synchrony service is running, but Collaborative Editing does not work for any users.

Diagnosis

Environment

• Confluence Data Center 6.x
• An authentication proxy is in use in the environment (e.g. IDMS)

Diagnostic Steps

• Confirm Synchrony is up and running locally on the Synchrony Nodes

  Process Check

  $ ps aux | grep -i synchrony
  synchro+   860  0.7  9.8 3622844 401484 ?      Sl   May28 622:26 java -Xms2048k -Xmx1024m -classpath /var/atlassian/synchrony/synchrony-standalone.jar:/var/atlassian/synchrony/postgresql-9.4.1212.jar -Dsynchrony.cluster.impl=hazelcast-btf -Dsynchrony.port=8091 -Dcluster.listen.port=5701 -Dsynchrony.cluster.base.port=25500 -Dcluster.join.type=tcpip -Dcluster.join.tcpip.members=10.10.15.20 -Dsynchrony.context.path=/synchrony -Dsynchrony.cluster.bind=10.10.15.21 -Dsynchrony.bind=10.10.15.21 -Dcluster.interfaces=10.10.15.21 -Dsynchrony.service.url=https://confluence.example.com/synchrony -Djwt.private.key=<private-key-here> -Djwt.public.key=<public-key-here> -Dsynchrony.database.url=jdbc:postgresql://10.10.25.44:5432/conf6 -Dsynchrony.database.username=dbusername -Dsynchrony.database.password=dbpassword -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Dip.whitelist=127.0.0.1,localhost synchrony.core sql

  Heartbeat test

  $ curl http://<node-ip>:8091/synchrony/heartbeat
  OK

• Capture a HAR file and confirm the following two GET requests return the values below:

  • GET /rest/synchrony-interop/status 

    {
    	"synchronyEnabled": true,
    	"sharedDraftsEnabled": true
    }

    
    

    • This is the check to see whether Collab Editing is enabled on the Confluence side (e.g. On/Off). This does not check if the feature is actually working or if Synchrony is running.

  • GET /rest/synchrony-interop/synchrony-status

    {
    	"status": "stopped"
    }

    
    

    • The expected state is "running" - a "stopped" state indicates the remote Synchrony server is not reachable, or not running. In this example, the Synchrony server is up and the heartbeat URL responds OK, this indicates Confluence can't reach synchrony.
• Confirm the Synchrony Interop Bootstrap Plugin (System plugin) is enabled

• A wget to the jwt-key URL results in a permission denied error: 

  $ wget https://confluence.example.com/synchrony/jwt-key
  -2018-07-09 01:33:52- https://confluence.example.com/synchrony/jwt-key
  Resolving confluence.example.com... 10.1.15.4
  Connecting to confluence.example.com|10.1.15.4|:443... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
  Location: https://idmsauth.example.com/IDMSWebAuth/login?appIdKey=0xyz&path=%3Fos_destination%3D%252Fsynchrony%252Fjwt-key&rv=30 [following]
  -2018-07-09 01:33:52- https://idmsauth.example.com/IDMSWebAuth/login?appIdKey=0xyz&path=%3Fos_destination%3D%252Fsynchrony%252Fjwt-key&rv=30
  Resolving idmsauth.example.com... 10.10.32.15
  Connecting to idmsauth.example.com|10.10.32.15|:443... connected.
  HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200
  Length: 4762 (4.7K) [text/html]
  jwt-key: Permission denied
  
  Cannot write to “jwt-key” (Success).

Cause

In some environments, an intermediary authentication proxy (such as IDMS) is used for all web traffic. This type of proxy may require the path for synchrony ( /synchrony/* ) to be whitelisted, else it will be blocked.

Resolution

Whitelist/Allow the path for synchrony in the authentication proxy rules: 

/synchrony/*