Purpose

In Confluence 7.18.1 (and selected earlier versions), changes were made to use a shared secret to authenticate nodes as they join the cluster. The shared secret is automatically generated, however, if necessary you can change the shared secret, or disable this authentication altogether.  

The following steps are available in these Confluence Data Center versions:

• 7.18.1 and later
• 7.14.3
• 7.16.4
• 7.15.2
• 7.14.3
• 7.13 Long Term Support release from 7.13.7
• 7.4 Long Term Support release from 7.4.17.

Solution

Change the shared secret

You can change the shared secret by updating the confluence.cfg.xml file. This change must be made in both the shared home, and local home for all nodes. You can't make this change while Confluence is running, you'll need to stop the whole cluster. 

To change the shared secret:

1. Stop Confluence on all nodes. 
2. Edit <shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml

3. Find the confluence.cluster.authentication.secret property and change the value. The secret must be a string of maximum 40 characters.
    

   <property name="confluence.cluster.authentication.secret">abcdefg123456789hijklmnop12345679qrstuvw</property>

4. Save the file.
5. On the first node, edit <local-home>/confluence.cfg.xml
6. Find the confluence.cluster.authentication.secret property and change the value to match the shared home. Shared secrets must match. 
7. Save the file. 
8. Repeat this process on each remaining node. Remember the secret must be the same in all places. 
9. Start Confluence, one node at a time. Make sure you wait for the first node to start completely before you start the second node. 

Disable node authentication

We don't recommend disabling node authentication. You can't make this change while Confluence is running, you'll need to stop the whole cluster. 

To disable node authentication:

1. Stop Confluence on all nodes. 
2. Edit <shared-home>/confluence.cfg.xml

3. Find the confluence.cluster.authentication.enabled property and set it to false.
    

   <property name="confluence.cluster.authentication.enabled">true</property>

4. Save the file.
5. On the first node, edit <local-home>/confluence.cfg.xml
6. Find the confluence.cluster.authentication.enabled property and set it to false.
7. Save the file. 
8. Repeat this process for each node. 
9. Start Confluence, one node at a time. Make sure you wait for the first node to start completely before you start the second node.