Problem

Confluence will not start although Tomcat starts without issue. Nothing is reported to the atlassian-confluence.log.

When hitting the baseURL, confluence reports a Bootstrap exception: Unable to bootstrap application, Failed to parse config file: Error on line 1 of document  :  Content is not allowed in prolog.

No server id found.

Cause

Confluence needs to be able to load the configuration from the confluence.home/confluence.cfg.xml file. There is a problem with that file.  

This could also be caused by file system corruption.

Resolution

• Validate the confluence.cfg.xml file for consistency in formatting of an xml file.
• Review any configuration files that have been edited recently to ensure the syntax is correct and there are no elements left open.
  

  Restoring any recently edited files to default can be done by installing a new, default instance of confluence and copying them into place in the existing environment.

• If neither of the above help, please check for file system corruption via chkdsk in Windows or fsck in Linux.