JIRA Core 7.3.x upgrade notes
Please follow the instructions in the general Upgrading JIRA applications guide, as well as the JIRA 7.3.x specific instructions below. The general guide contains important tasks that are essential for getting your upgraded JIRA installation to work correctly and, if necessary, migrating existing configurations.
You should also make sure that your licenses and add-ons are all up-to-date. Removing any incompatible add-ons before upgrading may help you avoid problems during your upgrade process. You can check the compatibility of your add-ons before your upgrade using the JIRA update check. We introduced a new property in JIRA Core 7.3 which allows you to start JIRA from the command line with your add-ons disabled.
This page describes known issues as well as changes you should be aware of before deciding whether or not to upgrade to JIRA 7.3.x.
On this page:
Information for JIRA developers
See Preparing for 7.3 for important information that could affect your add-ons or scripts. Also, see our Java API policy for JIRA.
Information for administrators
Optimizing the upgrade process
When you start the upgrade, JIRA automatically creates an XML backup of your database, which slows down the upgrade process. Since you’re creating your own backup anyway, you can disable the automatic backup before the upgrade.
- Stop JIRA.
- Edit the jira-config.properties file, located at the root of your JIRA home directory.
If this file doesn't exist, create it in a text editor. For more info, see Making changes to the jira-config.propertiesfile. Add the following entry:
jira.autoexport=false- Start JIRA.
Performance issues
We’ve noticed that versions 7.3.7 and 7.3.8 have performance issues and show errors while opening pages or finishing some actions. This applies only if you’re usingpostgreSQLand have more than 500k users. To work around it, increase the heap size by 1GB per million users. We’ll release a fix for this in the next bugfix release.
Running JIRA on MySQL
MySQL introduced a change in MySQL 5.7.6 which requires your JIRA user for the data base to have the REFERENCES permission. If you're upgrading to JIRA Core 7.3 and MySQL 5.7.6 or above, you need to make sure your JIRA user has this permission.
Running JIRA applications over SSL
If you're running your JIRA application over SSL, and have already configured Apache Tomcat with HTTPS, you'll need to update your server.xml HTTPS connector with the correct protocol. If you don't, JIRA will fail to start. To update the required protocol:
- Make sure JIRA is stopped.
- Navigate to your server.xml page at <JIRA_INSTALL>/conf/server.xml.
Locate your HTTPS connector, which will look something similar to this:
<Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" keyAlias="jira" keystoreFile="<JIRA_HOME>/jira.jks" keystorePass="changeit" keystoreType="JKS"/>and change the protocol so that it looks more like this:
<Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" keyAlias="jira" keystoreFile="<JIRA_HOME>/jira.jks" keystorePass="changeit" keystoreType="JKS"/>- Save your changes.
- Start JIRA.
You may perform these steps during your upgrade, but make sure you perform them before you start JIRA at the end of the upgrade process.
Automatic backup removal
Previous JIRA versions created an automatic XML backup whenever JIRA attempted an upgrade. This process was very resource intensive, prone to errors, and we never recommended it. As such, we've removed it completely, and continue to recommend you always perform a backup using your native database tools.
Checking your project administrators
JIRA Core 7.3 now allows project administrators to edit workflows that are specific to their project only. To help with checking who would be granted this permission, you can use a script we've provided to check you projects and corresponding project administrators. The script requires node.js and can be found in this Bitbucket repository.
Version specific detail
- Upgrading from a 7.1 or later version - There are no known issues.
- Upgrading from a 7.0.x version - There is a known issue regarding gadgets, and there is a workaround described in the JIRA Core 7.1.x upgrade notes.
- Upgrading from a version earlier than 7.0 - Please consult the Migration hub as it contains information on important user management, application access and log in changes.