Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles 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

Problem

Confluence/Jira fails to sync with Crowd/LDAP servers or inconsistently syncs missing groups and users

The following appears in the atlassian-confluence.log:

2014-08-20 20:22:06,091 QuartzScheduler_Worker-0 INFO ServiceRunner     [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteChangeOperations] removed [ 1 ] user members from [ xxxxxxx ] in [ 1ms ]
2014-08-20 20:22:06,154 QuartzScheduler_Worker-0 INFO ServiceRunner     [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteChangeOperations] removed [ 1 ] user members from [ xxxxxxx ] in [ 1ms ]
2014-08-20 20:22:06,502 QuartzScheduler_Worker-0 INFO ServiceRunner     [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteDirectory] failed synchronisation complete for directory [ xxxxxx ] in [ 124364ms ]
2014-08-20 20:22:06,613 QuartzScheduler_Worker-0 ERROR ServiceRunner     [atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingDirectoryPoller] Error occurred while refreshing the cache for directory [ xxxxxx ].
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unmatched braces in the pattern.

Diagnosis

You should see an attempt to remove or add users from a group right before a failed synchronization and the "Unmatched braces in the pattern" as we can see above.

• Add the class "com.atlassian.crowd.directory" and set to DEBUG in Administration -> Logging and Profiling

• Force a new synchronization with the affected directory

• Search in the latest logs for the last sync attempt and locate the error message. You should see something like this:

[atlassian.crowd.directory.DbCachingRemoteChangeOperations] synchronising [ 0 ] user members for group [ thisisa{test{group ]

• If you have curly brackets in the group/user name as we can see above, you are affected by this issue.

Cause

This issue is caused due to curly brackets ( { ) being used in the name of some group or user in the directory (Crowd or LDAP).

Resolution

• Remove/Rename the group/user containing the curly brackets in the affected directory and sync the application again.