Confluence fails to start on port 80 or 443 with "Permission denied" error in logs
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
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 fails to start up, and a "Failed to initialize component" error shows in the catalina.out followed by a "permission denied" cause:
12-Mar-2019 16:44:49.905 SEVERE [main] org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.handleSubClassException Failed to initialize component [Connector[HTTP/1.1-80]]
...
Caused by: java.net.SocketException: Permission denied
Cause
The error above indicates the Tomcat cannot start the server to accept connections due to permissions issues. [Connector[HTTP/1.1-80]] indicates Confluence is attempting to start on port 80, which is often restricted for security purposes on many operating systems.
Resolution
There are two options for resolving this:
- Run Confluence on a non-restricted port, such as 8090 (the default port for Confluence)
- Install a reverse proxy to redirect requests from port 80 and 443 to the internal server. For recommended reverse proxy configurations, see the articles linked from Proxy and HTTPS setup for Confluence.