Confluence fails to start up after replacing or editing web.xml file
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
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
Summary
After replacing the default web.xml file in <Confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF, or editing it to add or modify a filter, Confluence fails to start up. The Tomcat logs in <Confluence-install>/logs/catalina.out show the following:
24-Mar-2020 23:51:18.902 SEVERE [Catalina-utility-1] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal One or more Filters failed to start. Full details will be found in the appropriate container log file
24-Mar-2020 23:51:18.912 SEVERE [Catalina-utility-1] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal Context [] startup failed due to previous errors
Environment
All versions
Diagnosis
You can tell that the startup issue is caused by an incompatible filter in web.xml due to the following types of error in <Confluence-home>/logs/atlassian-confluence.log:
2020-03-25 11:49:35,038 ERROR [Catalina-utility-1] [ContainerBase.[Standalone].[localhost].[/]] log Exception starting filter [holding-until-started-filter]
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.atlassian.confluence.impl.servlet.HoldingUntilStartedFilter
at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoaderBase.loadClass(WebappClassLoaderBase.java:1365)
at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoaderBase.loadClass(WebappClassLoaderBase.java:1188)
at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.loadClass(DefaultInstanceManager.java:540)
at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.loadClassMaybePrivileged(DefaultInstanceManager.java:521)
at org.apache.catalina.core.DefaultInstanceManager.newInstance(DefaultInstanceManager.java:150)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterConfig.getFilter(ApplicationFilterConfig.java:249)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterConfig.<init>(ApplicationFilterConfig.java:102)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.filterStart(StandardContext.java:4533)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5172)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:183)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1384)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1374)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$201(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:180)
at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:293)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
2020-03-25 11:49:35,058 FATAL [Catalina-utility-1] [atlassian.spring.container.SpringContainerContext] getComponent Spring Application context has not been setDifferent classes may be affected by this, such as:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.atlassian.johnson.context.JohnsonContextListener
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceConfigurationListener
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ConfluenceBootstrappedContextLoaderListener
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.atlassian.confluence.setup.ValidLicenseContextListenerCause
An incompatible filter was likely added to web.xml, or a web.xml file from an older version of Confluence was copied to a newer Confluence version.
Solution
Replace <Confluence-installation>/confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml with the default web.xml file from a fresh Confluence install of the same version, or remove any customizations that were recently added to the file, and restart.
If you also recently upgraded Confluence, ensure the web.xml file located in these 2 locations were not accidentally swapped post-upgrade:
<Confluence-installation>/confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml<Confluence-installation>/conf/web.xml