Stash Fails to Start with the Reference to Entity "ABC123" Must End with the ';' Delimiter Error
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
After making changes to server.xml, Stash fails to start. The following is logged in catalina.out:
25-Jun-2015 22:54:18.834 SEVERE [main] org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.fatalError Parse Fatal Error at line 106 column 44: The reference to entity "ABC123" must end with the ';' delimiter.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; systemId: file:/C:/Atlassian/Stash/stash-home/shared/server.xml; lineNumber: 106; columnNumber: 44; The reference to entity "ABC123" must end with the ';' delimiter.
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:198)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.fatalError(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:177)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:441)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLErrorReporter.reportError(XMLErrorReporter.java:368)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLScanner.reportFatalError(XMLScanner.java:1436)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLScanner.scanAttributeValue(XMLScanner.java:890)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanAttribute(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:1546)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:1318)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:2770)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:606)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:510)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:848)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:777)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:141)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1213)
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:649)
at org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester.parse(Digester.java:1457)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.load(Catalina.java:551)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.load(Catalina.java:599)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.load(Bootstrap.java:310)
at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:484)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
at com.atlassian.stash.internal.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:59)Cause
This is caused by a special character being present in server.xml which has not been escaped. This is likely caused by an ampersand (&).
Resolution
Replace the & with & to escape it.
For example:
Test&StringBecomes:
Test&String
Last modified on Mar 30, 2016
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