Knowledge Base

Database was successfully initialized, but failed to start

Sometimes when the database does not start it could be something as simple as unnecessary characters in the neo4j.conf file. For example if you add space and/or tab characters to below setting:

dbms.ssl.policy.client_policy.private_key=/var/lib/neo4j/certificates/client_policy/neo4j.key

The database will fail to start and show you this message:

Caused by: org.neo4j.kernel.lifecycle.LifecycleException: Component 'org.neo4j.server.database.LifecycleManagingDatabase@691eb782' was successfully initialized, but failed to start. Please see the attached cause exception "/var/lib/neo4j/certificates/client_policy/neo4j.key (No such file or directory)".

Make sure to edit the neo4j.conf file with a text file editor and not a word processor to reduce the risk of such issues.