This page last changed on Sep 19, 2006 by david.soul@atlassian.com.
This document is now out of date

Please refer to Installing Confluence Standalone for updated instructions.

Installing the standalone version is easy:

  1. Download and install the Java Development Kit (JDK) from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html. You want the J2SE SDK version without the Sun Java System Application Server.
  2. Set the JAVA_HOME variable to where you installed Java. If you are running windows, steps on how to do this can be found here
  3. Unzip the standalone version into a directory. It does not matter where you put it, but you need to remember where it is. This directory is called the 'confluence install directory' in the rest of the instructions.
  4. Ensure that you do not have the CATALINA_HOME environment variable specified or pointing to a previously installed instance of Tomcat. The confluence standalone instance runs within a bundled tomcat instance, and having CATALINA_HOME specified in the environment will confuse the tomcat startup scripts.
  5. Edit the confluence-init.properties file in the confluence\WEB-INF\classes directory which you can find under the confluence install directory, and set the confluence.home property to a directory of your choice. The line that you need to change in the confluence-init.properties file looks like #confluence.home=/tmp/confluence. You need to change it to confluence.home=<your confluence home location>. For example you might choose c:/confluencedata as your confluence.home directory, so you'd change that line to confluence.home=c:/confluencedata. Don't forget to remove the leading '#' character. This directory is where Confluence will store it's configuration information, indexes and attachments, so the user running the server must have write access to this directory.
  6. Run bin/startup.sh (*nix) or bin\startup.bat (Windows). Check that there are no errors on the console. See Troubleshooting & Technical Support if you see any errors
  7. Point your browser at http://localhost:8080/. You should see the Confluence Setup Wizard!

If you are installing on Mac OS X this document contains more detail: Confluence Installation OS X.pdf


Couldn't you write an installer to automate steps 3-6? Seems unnecessarily laborious.

Posted by at Jun 29, 2005 03:46

Even better, couldn't you write an installer for the whole thing?

Posted by at Jul 07, 2005 17:06

The fact that there's no installer really holds this product. Relying on batch files is, for lack of better words, totally stupid.

I particularly like how startup.bat opens a new window, which writes out an error message right before it closes, meaning I can't see anything. Log files? No log files.

How about an installer Atlassian? It's 2005.

Posted by at Jul 10, 2005 21:51

Hi,

Yes, we are certainly looking into bundling the standalone version of Confluence with an installer. It is something we have been discussing recently and are looking to incorporate in one of the upcoming releases.

As for your current problem, if you modify the startup.bat and update the line:

call "%EXECUTABLE%" start %CMD_LINE_ARGS%

to read

call "%EXECUTABLE%" run %CMD_LINE_ARGS%

and run the file from a command prompt, it will run from within that command prompt and you will see the cause of the error.

Posted by daniel@atlassian.com at Jul 10, 2005 22:30

If you have another Tomcat running on the same machine, like stand-alone Jira, then you must edit conf/server.xml like it says in the README.txt and change TWO ports:

<Server port="8005" shutdown="SHUTDOWN">

as well as the port in:

<Connector className="org.apache.coyote.tomcat4.CoyoteConnector" port="8080" ......

Just changing port 8080 won't do it, you must also change 8005. The logs are not any help at all in figuring this out, they indicate that port 8080 is already in use!

Posted by at Sep 13, 2005 08:35

You lost me with "Edit the confluence-init.properties file in the confluence\WEB-INF\classes directory and set the confluence.home property to a directory of your choice". What am I editing and where is the confluence.home file?

Posted by at Sep 14, 2005 17:29

You are editing the confluence-init.properties file, which you'll find in the directory:

<where you unzipped Confluence>\confluence\WEB-INF\classes

The confluence.home directory is where you choose to tell Confluence to store its data -- on windows 'C:\confluencedata' would be a good choice.

I've updated the instructions to make this clearer.

Please email confluence-support at atlassian.com if you need more assistance.

Posted by tom@atlassian.com at Sep 14, 2005 18:19

You guys need to read Pragmatic Project Automation by Mike Clark (ISBN 0-9745140-3-9). Automating installation is one of the first things you need to do.

Posted by at Sep 14, 2005 23:03

I'm surprised at the amount of criticism about the lack of an installer... while I can see it being useful for someone new to webservers and such, it still can't automate installing the Java SDK for you, you still need to know where to point certain paths, etc. And when evaluating the product, I find it very useful to see just how difficult it will be to integrate the tool with an existing database/webserver (which it isn't! JIRA/Confluence are some of the easiest java apps to get running I've seen).

And if you need to make modifications later, an installer isn't going to help - you're _still_ going to need to know how to open up the .properties file and edit it. Might as well learn how to do it from the start...

Just playing devil's advocate.

Posted by at Sep 21, 2005 10:22

this is just a symptom of a bigger problem. everyone is supposed to be 1337 enough to figure things out, hand-edit config files, etc. I should really just be using UNIX and VI to hand edit all my files right?

Sorry, but this is 2005, and there are such things as graphics, and (gasp) user interfaces! I have an CS degree, and use a wide variety of software products on a daily basis. It's not that hard to figure out the right files to change, and how to manually setup a new product. However, this isn't the ral issue; often times, the process is just tedious or a pain in the ass. If you leave out a single step you can get a weird cascade of errors when you try to start things up, and invariably this takes a lot of time to track down. For me time is definately money, and having to deal with a lot of people's linux/unix hax0r mentality is getting old.

Here's an idea: Write a nice installation program, that does a most of the work for you, and is easy to use, and hey maybe even has a well-designed UI. Then, provide good documentation and tutorials on how to change config/property files for customization, or hey, you could even write a little admin tool to make it easier to do. With as much memory and processor power that most people have these days, there really isn't much reason to hand-edit files or use a shitty user-interface. And it really isn't that hard to write documentation or good installation instructions, and provide some helpful tips and troubleshooting along the way. Sure you have to balance the knowledge of elite users who know this stuff in and out with new users who may not even know how to install a JDK. But any customer focused company (that is, one with products) should spend some time on this.

This isn't really specifically aimed at Confluence, more at a problem endemic to the developer community and the various tools and products we use to get our jobs done. I just get so fed up sometimes

Posted by at Oct 04, 2005 11:00

I see above that if there is another instance of Tomcat on the same box, 2 changes are required in the server.xml file "Server port=xxxx and port=xxxx.
Does that mean that the redirectPort="8443" setting in the connector tag remains at 8443, the default?

Posted by dan.webb@queensu.ca at Oct 13, 2005 09:18

Hi Dan,

Yes, the redirectPort will need to be different between the different servers, but only if you intend to use HTTPS. The redirectPort will need to match the port you are using for HTTPS.

Regards,
-Daniel

Posted by daniel@atlassian.com at Oct 17, 2005 02:52

I agree with both of you.

A graphical installer would be a very good thing for us to have, as would a GUI "console" that could manage logfiles and the like. The easier we make it for people to try our product, the more people will try it.

On the other hand, Confluence gets installed in many environments in which there isn't a GUI at all, and by system administrators with an inherent mistrust of installers, who want complete control (and knowledge) of where everything goes and how it gets there.

The final word is that in any organisation developer resources are finite, and the development of an automated an installation process has to be prioritised against all the other features that user are clamouring for.

The current installation procedure is pretty straightforward. If we were to do an installer, it would probably be an evaluation installer, was focused on being a "double-click this and it's running" way to get Confluence happening with no configuration at all – kinda like Instiki's "There is no step three" installation. We had one of these for OS X for a while, but OS X is easy because you know exactly where Java is going to be installed.

Posted by cmiller at Oct 17, 2005 18:10

Could you just bundle the JRE (ala IntelliJ IDEA)? I know that would significantly increase the size of the download, but that could also be done on demand (depending on the installer used) ... eg:

  1. Download the confluence-eval.exe
  2. Run the installer and click the big "install" button - possibly a subtle "advanced" button tucked away for those who want to set the vars manually
  3. Checks for Java in the obvious places / using sys variables, if it is unsuccessful it downloads a JRE for its own use
  4. It asks for a license key (or invites you to enter your email to generate an eval for you) connects online for this
  5. It installs the various components in a preset location (use a different port for tomcat to 8080 to lower the risk of collision ... a simple socket connection test would find running servers, although there could still be stopped installs)
  6. Drop in menu items to link to the

and your running.

You effectively meet your goal of getting as close to zero config as possible (the license key could possibly be injected into the install exe just before download).

However you are entirely right when you say that there are bigger fish to fry on the desired feature list, but this would certainly increase exposure to the lesser end of the techie scale (the people who try a product out for 5 mins and give up if it doesnt all fall into place).

Posted by dhardiker@adaptavist.com at Nov 19, 2005 13:12

I am trying to setup the standalone version on a MS Server 2003 standard machine. When i run the startup.bat file it hangs at:

INFO: Starting Coyote HTTP/1.1 on port 8080

any ideas?

Thanks,
Ben

Posted by bedwards@netic.net at Nov 21, 2005 14:31

Hi Ben,

I would recommend looking at the CONFLUENCE_INSTALL/logs directory. This should contain a couple of files, including but not restricted to atlassian-confluence*.log. This file should give you further information about what is going on.

What problem are you seeing?

Regards,
-Daniel

Posted by daniel@atlassian.com at Nov 22, 2005 00:02
Document generated by Confluence on Feb 07, 2007 23:55