JIRA Installation Directory

The 'JIRA Installation Directory' is the directory into which the JIRA application files and libraries have been extracted, either:

by the Windows or Linux installers, or
by extracting the contents of a JIRA installation archive or WAR distribution archive file (i.e. a .tar.gz or .zip file).

JIRA does not modify or store any data in this directory.

Important Files and Directories

The directories/files described below are found under different sub-directories of the 'JIRA Installation Directory', depending on whether you have installed a 'recommended' or WAR distribution of JIRA. Please substitute the following directories for the <jira-application-dir> placeholder below, as follows:

'Recommended' distributions — the atlassian-jira subdirectory of the 'JIRA Installation Directory' installed using the 'Windows Installer', 'Linux Installer' or from an 'Archive File'.
WAR distribution — the webapp subdirectory of the 'JIRA Installation Directory'.
Please Note: To edit files in this webapp directory, first copy them to the edit-webapp subdirectory (if they are not already present in edit-webapp) and edit the copies in edit-webapp. Refer to the 'Webapp Layout' section of the JIRA WAR Configuration Overview for details. Copies of the jira-application.properties and entityengine.xml file are already available in the edit-webapp sub-directory.

`<jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/classes/jira-application.properties`

This file tells JIRA where to find the JIRA Home Directory.
Be aware that your JIRA Home Directory defined in this file can be overridden. See Setting your JIRA Home Directory for more information.

`<jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/classes/jpm.xml`

This file stores the default values for JIRA's advanced configuration settings and should not be modified. The default values of properties in this file are customised (i.e. overridden) by redefining them in either the jira-config.properties file (in your JIRA Home Directory) or the JIRA database (via the JIRA administration area). See Advanced JIRA Configuration for more information.

`<jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/lib/`

This is the directory where plugins built on Atlassian's Plugin Framework 1 (i.e. 'Plugins 1' plugins) are stored. If you are installing a new 'Plugins 1' plugin, you will need to deploy it into this directory.
'Plugins 2' plugins should be stored in the JIRA Home Directory.

`<jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties`

JIRA's logging configuration file. See Logging and Profiling.

The actual log files generated by JIRA can be found in the following locations:

JIRA application log — bin/atlassian-jira.log
Application server log — generally the application server log file can be found under the logs directory. However, this can vary depending on the application server you are running. Please see Where are the application server logs? for further details.

`<jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/classes/entityengine.xml`

This file configures the OFBiz Entity Engine which JIRA uses to store persist data in a datasource. See Configuring the Entity Engine for JIRA.

The sub-directories/files described below are found under the root of the JIRA Installation directory.

`conf/server.xml`

This file is used for JIRA SSL configuration. See Running JIRA over SSL or HTTPS.

Memory Settings

The file used to edit JAVA_OPTS memory settings will depend on the method used to install JIRA, as well as the operating system used for your installation.

For example, if you are running JIRA on Tomcat in Windows (manual startup), you would update the following file:
bin\setenv.bat
whereas for JIRA on Tomcat in Linux/Unix, you would update this file:
bin/setenv.sh

See Increasing JIRA Memory for further details.