Confluence throws 'Preemptive authentication requested but no default proxy credentials available' when accessing pages using outbound proxy

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. 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

When accessing pages that contains content obtained from an external service, the following warnings appear in atlassian-confluence.log:

1 2 3 4 2017-03-13 16:55:33,585 WARN [http-nio-443-exec-11] [apache.commons.httpclient.HttpMethodDirector] authenticateProxy Required proxy credentials not available for BASIC <any realm>@proxy.xxx.com:3128 -- referer: http://localhost:8090/display/TEST | url: /rest/calendar-services/1.0/calendar/events.json | traceId: bd997c289a6e64a2 | userName: admin 2017-03-13 16:55:33,585 WARN [http-nio-443-exec-10] [apache.commons.httpclient.HttpMethodDirector] authenticateProxy Preemptive authentication requested but no default proxy credentials available -- referer: http://localhost:8090/display/TEST | url: /rest/calendar-services/1.0/calendar/events.json | traceId: 194954d8084x97e7 | userName: admin

The page can be loaded fine and the content appears correctly and as expected. However, the warnings above still appear in the logs as noise.

Diagnosis

Confluence is configured with an outbound HTTP/HTTPS proxy as per the documentation below, but no credentials (http.proxyUser and http.proxyPassword) is required for the outbound proxy.

Workaround

To ensure the warnings no longer appear in your logs, include the following properties into your Java options (setenv.sh / setenv.bat) or catalina.properties and restart Confluence. There should be no values passed as no credentials are required.

1 2 3 4 http.proxyUser= http.proxyPassword= https.proxyUser= https.proxyPassword=
Updated on April 8, 2025

Still need help?

The Atlassian Community is here for you.