Atlassian Confluence Server

Confluence Server is where you create, organise and discuss work with your team. Capture the knowledge that's too often lost in email inboxes and shared network drives in Confluence - where it's easy to find, use, and update. Give every team, project, or department its own space to create the things they need, whether it's meeting notes, product requirements, file lists, or project plans, you can get more done in Confluence.

Learn more about Confluence Server: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

You can find the repository for this Dockerfile at https://hub.docker.com/r/atlassian/confluence-server

Contents

[TOC]

Overview

This Docker container makes it easy to get an instance of Confluence up and running.

Quick Start

For the directory in the environmental variable CONFLUENCE_HOME that is used to store Confluence data (amongst other things) we recommend mounting a host directory as a data volume:

Additionally, if running Confluence in Data Center mode it is required that a shared filesystem is mounted. The mountpoint (inside the container) can be configured with CONFLUENCE_SHARED_HOME.

Start Atlassian Confluence Server:

docker run -v /data/your-confluence-home:/var/atlassian/application-data/confluence --name="confluence" -d -p 8090:8090 -p 8091:8091 atlassian/confluence-server

Success. Confluence is now available on http://localhost:8090*

Please ensure your container has the necessary resources allocated to it. We recommend 2GiB of memory allocated to accommodate the application server. See Supported Platforms for further information.

* Note: If you are using docker-machine on Mac OS X, please use open http://$(docker-machine ip default):8090 instead.

Configuring Confluence

This Docker image is intended to be configured from its environment; the provided information is used to generate the application configuration files from templates. This allows containers to be repeatably created and destroyed on-the-fly, as required in advanced cluster configurations. Most aspects of the deployment can be configured in this manner; the necessary environment variables are documented below. However, if your particular deployment scenario is not covered by these settings, it is possible to override the provided templates with your own; see the section Advanced Configuration below.

Memory / Heap Size

If you need to override Confluence Server's default memory allocation, you can control the minimum heap (Xms) and maximum heap (Xmx) via the below environment variables.

• JVM_MINIMUM_MEMORY (default: 1024m)

  The minimum heap size of the JVM

• JVM_MAXIMUM_MEMORY (default: 1024m)

  The maximum heap size of the JVM

Tomcat and Reverse Proxy Settings

If Confluence is run behind a reverse proxy server (e.g. a load-balancer or nginx server), then you need to specify extra options to make Confluence aware of the setup. They can be controlled via the below environment variables.

• ATL_PROXY_NAME (default: NONE)

  The reverse proxy's fully qualified hostname. CATALINA_CONNECTOR_PROXYNAME is also supported for backwards compatability.

• ATL_PROXY_PORT (default: NONE)

  The reverse proxy's port number via which Confluence is accessed. CATALINA_CONNECTOR_PROXYPORT is also supported for backwards compatability.

• ATL_TOMCAT_PORT (default: 8090)

  The port for Tomcat/Confluence to listen on. Depending on your container deployment method this port may need to be [exposed and published][docker-expose].

• ATL_TOMCAT_SCHEME (default: http)

  The protocol via which Confluence is accessed. CATALINA_CONNECTOR_SCHEME is also supported for backwards compatability.

• ATL_TOMCAT_SECURE (default: false)

  Set 'true' if ATL_TOMCAT_SCHEME is 'https'. CATALINA_CONNECTOR_SECURE is also supported for backwards compatability.

• ATL_TOMCAT_CONTEXTPATH (default: NONE)

  The context path the application is served over. CATALINA_CONTEXT_PATH is also supported for backwards compatability.

The following Tomcat/Catalina options are also supported. For more information, see https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/index.html.

• ATL_TOMCAT_MGMT_PORT (default: 8000)
• ATL_TOMCAT_MAXTHREADS (default: 100)
• ATL_TOMCAT_MINSPARETHREADS (default: 10)
• ATL_TOMCAT_CONNECTIONTIMEOUT (default: 20000)
• ATL_TOMCAT_ENABLELOOKUPS (default: false)
• ATL_TOMCAT_PROTOCOL (default: HTTP/1.1)
• ATL_TOMCAT_ACCEPTCOUNT (default: 10)

JVM configuration

If you need to pass additional JVM arguments to Confluence such as specifying a custom trust store, you can add them via the below environment variable

• JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS

  Additional JVM arguments for Confluence

Example:

docker run -e JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS=-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/var/atlassian/application-data/confluence/cacerts -v confluenceVolume:/var/atlassian/application-data/confluence --name="confluence" -d -p 8090:8090 -p 8091:8091 atlassian/confluence-server

Confluence-specific settings

• ATL_AUTOLOGIN_COOKIE_AGE (default: 1209600; two weeks, in seconds)

  The maximum time a user can remain logged-in with 'Remember Me'.

• CONFLUENCE_HOME

  The confluence home directory. This may be on an mounted volume; if so it should be writable by the user confluence. See note below about UID mappings.

Database configuration

It is optionally possible to configure the database from the environment, avoiding the need to do so through the web startup screen.

The following variables are all must all be supplied if using this feature:

• ATL_JDBC_URL

  The database URL; this is database-specific.

• ATL_JDBC_USER

  The database user to connect as.

• ATL_JDBC_PASSWORD

  The password for the database user.

• ATL_DB_TYPE

  The type of database; valid supported values are:

  • mssql
  • mysql
  • oracle12c
  • postgresql

Note: Due to licensing restrictions Confluence does not ship with a MySQL or Oracle JDBC drivers. To use these databases you will need to copy a suitable driver into the container and restart it. For example, to copy the MySQL driver into a container named "confluence", you would do the following:

docker cp mysql-connector-java.x.y.z.jar confluence:/opt/atlassian/confluence/lib
docker restart confluence

For more information see the Database JDBC Drivers page.

Optional database settings

The following variables are for the database connection pool, and are optional.

• ATL_DB_POOLMINSIZE (default: 20)
• ATL_DB_POOLMAXSIZE (default: 100)
• ATL_DB_TIMEOUT (default: 30)
• ATL_DB_IDLETESTPERIOD (default: 100)
• ATL_DB_MAXSTATEMENTS (default: 0)
• ATL_DB_VALIDATE (default: false)
• ATL_DB_ACQUIREINCREMENT (default: 1)
• ATL_DB_VALIDATIONQUERY (default: "select 1")

Data Center configuration

This docker image can be run as part of a Data Center cluster. You can specify the following properties to start Confluence as a Data Center node, instead of manually configuring a cluster. See Installing Confluence Data Center for more information.

Cluster configuration

Confluence Data Center allows clustering via various methods. For more information on the setting for each type see this page.

NOTE: The underlying network should be set-up to support the Confluence clustering type you are using. How to do this depends on the container management technology, and is beyond the scope of this documentation.

Common cluster settings

• ATL_CLUSTER_TYPE

  The cluster type. Setting this effectively enables clustering. Valid values are aws, multicast, and tcp_ip.

• ATL_CLUSTER_NAME

  The cluster name; this should be common across all nodes.

• ATL_PRODUCT_HOME_SHARED

  The location of the shared home directory for all Confluence nodes. Note: This must be real shared filesystem that is mounted inside the container. Additionally, see the note about UIDs.

• ATL_CLUSTER_TTL

  The time-to-live for cluster packets. Primarily of use in multicast clusters.

AWS cluster settings

The following should be populated from the AWS environment.

• ATL_HAZELCAST_NETWORK_AWS_IAM_ROLE
• ATL_HAZELCAST_NETWORK_AWS_IAM_REGION
• ATL_HAZELCAST_NETWORK_AWS_HOST_HEADER
• ATL_HAZELCAST_NETWORK_AWS_SECURITY_GROUP
• ATL_HAZELCAST_NETWORK_AWS_TAG_KEY
• ATL_HAZELCAST_NETWORK_AWS_TAG_VALUE

TCP cluster settings

• ATL_CLUSTER_PEERS

  A comma-separated list of peer IPs.

Multicast cluster settings

• ATL_CLUSTER_ADDRESS

  The multicast address the cluster will communicate on.

Advanced Configuration

As mentioned at the top of this section, the settings from the environment are used to populate the application configuration on the container startup. However in some cases you may wish to customise the settings in ways that are not supported by the environment variables above. In this case, it is possible to modify the base templates to add your own configuration. There are three main ways of doing this; modify our repository to your own image, build a new image from the existing one, or provide new templates at startup. We will briefly outline this methods here, but in practice how you do this will depend on your needs.

Building your own image

• Clone the Atlassian repository at https://bitbucket.org/atlassian-docker/docker-atlassian-confluence-server/
• Modify or replace the Jinja templates under config; NOTE: The files must have the .j2 extensions. However you don't have to use template variables if you don't wish.
• Build the new image with e.g: docker build --tag my-confluence-image --build-arg CONFLUENCE_VERSION=6.x.x .
• Optionally push to a registry, and deploy.

Build a new image from the existing one

• Create a new Dockerfile, which starts with the line e.g: FROM atlassian/confluence-server:latest.
• Use a COPY line to overwrite the provided templates.
• Build, push and deploy the new image as above.

Overwrite the templates at runtime

There are two main ways of doing this:

• If your container is going to be long-lived, you can create it, modify the installed templates under /opt/atlassian/etc/, and then run it.
• Alternatively, you can create a volume containing your alternative templates, and mount it over the provided templates at runtime with --volume my-config:/opt/atlassian/etc/.

Shared directory and user IDs

By default the Confuence application runs as the user confluence, with a UID and GID of 2002. Consequently this UID must have write access to the shared filesystem. If for some reason a different UID must be used, there are a number of options available:

• The Docker image can be rebuilt with a different UID.
• Under Linux, the UID can be remapped using user namespace remapping.

To preserve strict permissions for certain configuration files, this container starts as root to perform bootstrapping before running Confluence under a non-privileged user account. If you wish to start the container as a non-root user, please note that Tomcat configuration, and the bootstrapping of seraph-config.xml (SSO) & confluence-init.properties (overriding $CONFLUENCE_HOME) will be skipped and a warning will be logged. You may still apply custom configuration in this situation by mounting a custom file directly, e.g. by mounting your own server.xml file directly to /opt/atlassian/confluence/conf/server.xml

Database and Clustering bootstrapping will work as expected when starting this container as a non-root user.

Upgrade

To upgrade to a more recent version of Confluence Server you can simply stop the Confluence container and start a new one based on a more recent image:

docker stop confluence
docker rm confluence
docker run ... (see above)

As your data is stored in the data volume directory on the host, it will still be available after the upgrade.

Note: Please make sure that you don't accidentally remove the confluence container and its volumes using the -v option.

Backup

For evaluating Confluence you can use the built-in database that will store its files in the Confluence Server home directory. In that case it is sufficient to create a backup archive of the directory on the host that is used as a volume (/data/your-confluence-home in the example above).

Confluence's automatic backup is currently supported in the Docker setup. You can also use the Production Backup Strategy approach if you're using an external database.

Read more about data recovery and backups: Site Backup and Restore

Versioning

The latest tag matches the most recent release of Atlassian Confluence Server. So atlassian/confluence-server:latest will use the newest stable version of Confluence Server available.

Alternatively, you can use a specific minor version of Confluence Server by using a version number tag: atlassian/confluence-server:6.13. This will install the latest 6.13.x version that is available.

For the latest developer (EAP) release use atlassian/confluence-server:eap. This will install our latest milestone (not supported for use in production).

For example, atlassian/confluence-server:6.13-ubuntu-18.04-adoptopenjdk8 will install the latest 6.13.x version with AdoptOpenJDK 8.

Troubleshooting

These images include built-in scripts to assist in performing common JVM diagnostic tasks.

Thread dumps

/opt/atlassian/support/thread-dumps.sh can be run via docker exec to easily trigger the collection of thread dumps from the containerized application. For example:

docker exec my_container /opt/atlassian/support/thread-dumps.sh

By default this script will collect 10 thread dumps at 5 second intervals. This can be overridden by passing a custom value for the count and interval, by using -c / --count and -i / --interval respectively. For example, to collect 20 thread dumps at 3 second intervals:

docker exec my_container /opt/atlassian/support/thread-dumps.sh --count 20 --interval 3

Thread dumps will be written to $APP_HOME/thread_dumps/<date>.

Note: By default this script will also capture output from top run in 'Thread-mode'. This can be disabled by passing -n / --no-top

Heap dump

/opt/atlassian/support/heap-dump.sh can be run via docker exec to easily trigger the collection of a heap dump from the containerized application. For example:

docker exec my_container /opt/atlassian/support/heap-dump.sh

A heap dump will be written to $APP_HOME/heap.bin. If a file already exists at this location, use -f / --force to overwrite the existing heap dump file.

Manual diagnostics

The jcmd utility is also included in these images and can be used by starting a bash shell in the running container:

docker exec -it my_container /bin/bash

Support

These Confluence Docker images are presented as a technical preview, and not recommended for critical production deployments. However if you are interested in deploying with containers we would be interested in hearing your feedback.

Note that these images are built on the AdoptOpenJDK images. Prior to Confluence 6.13 OpenJDK was not a supported platform. See the 6.13 release-notes for more information.

License

Copyright © 2019 Atlassian Corporation Pty Ltd. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.