Confluence times out when trying to export a page to PDF
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
Summary
You are unable to export pages to PDF. After selecting the option "Export to PDF", Confluence keeps waiting for several minutes until a timeout occurs.
Environment
- Confluence 6.15.X
- No proxy configured between the browser and Confluence.
Diagnosis
By default, there is no log information regarding the "Export to PDF" action in atlassian-confluence.log.
However, a short time after the export attempt, it's possible to see logs from the Java Garbage Collector:
2020-01-28 09:29:36,830 WARN [alert-dispatch:thread-1] [atlassian-monitor] log 2020-01-28T11:29:36.829Z Component 'Java' alerted 'Garbage Collection exceeded time limit' (details: {"durationInMillis":3798,"windowInMillis":20000,"limitPercent":10,"threadMemoryAllocations":"","threadDump":[]}, trigger: {"pluginKey": "not-detected"})
Cause
Confluence wasn't able to export the selected page to PDF because it's running out of memory.
Solution
Check if your Confluence instance is correctly sized, considering the Server Hardware Requirements Guide.
Try increasing the available heap memory for your Confluence instance.
Related content
If an outbound proxy is used to access Confluence, you may refer to PDF Export Taking Too Long to Generate.