Installing JIRA from an Archive File on Windows, Linux or Solaris

1. Download and Extract the JIRA Archive File

1. Download the appropriate JIRA archive file for your operating system ('zip' for Windows or 'tar.gz' for Linux/Solaris), from the JIRA Download page.
   After selecting the appropriate operating system tab on the 'JIRA download' page, you may need to click the 'Show all' link to access the required installation package.
2. Extract the downloaded file.
   On Windows, we recommend using a file extraction tool such as 7-Zip.
   
    On Solaris, avoid using the Solaris' default tar utility! Please use GNU tar on this operating system to extract JIRA, as GNU tar handles long filenames better.

2. Set the JIRA Home Directory in JIRA

To set this, do one of the following:

• Edit the jira-application.properties file and set the value of the 'jira.home' property to the desired location for your JIRA Home Directory (this location should be something different than the application directory, or you may run into problems later). If you are specifying this location's path on Windows, use double back-slashes ("\") between subdirectories. For example, X:\\path\\to\\JIRA\‌\Home.
  If you define an UNC path in Microsoft Windows, be sure to double escape the leading backslash: \\\\machinename\\path\\to\\JIRA\\home
  See the JIRA Installation Directory page to find where this file is located.
• Set an environment variable named JIRA_HOME in your operating system whose value is the location of your JIRA Home Directory. To do this:

  • On Windows, do one of the following:
    
    • Configure this environment variable through the Windows user interface (typically through 'My Computer' or 'Computer')
    • At the command prompt, enter the following command (with your own JIRA Home path) before running JIRA from the command prompt:
      
      • set JIRA_HOME=X:\path\to\JIRA\Home
        Please set your JIRA_HOME  environment variable value using this format, where:
        
        • X is the drive letter where your JIRA Home Directory is located and
        • no spacing has been added around the equal sign ('=')
    • Specify the command above in a batch file used to start JIRA.
  • On Linux/Solaris, do one of the following:
    
    • Enter the following command at a shell/console prompt (with your own JIRA Home path) before running JIRA:
      
      • export JIRA_HOME=/path/to/jira/home
    • Specify the command above in a script used to start JIRA.

You can specify any location on a disk for your JIRA home directory. Please be sure to specify an absolute path.

Please note that you cannot use the same JIRA home directory for multiple instances of JIRA. We recommend locating your JIRA Home Directory completely independently of the JIRA Installation Directory (i.e. not nesting one within the other) as this will minimise information being lost during major operations (e.g. backing up and restoring instances).

3. Create a Dedicated User Account on the Operating System to Run JIRA

This step is optional if you are evaluating JIRA but should be mandatory for JIRA installations used in production.

4. Start JIRA

Enter the bin subdirectory of your JIRA installation directory and execute the appropriate file to start running JIRA:

• start-jira.sh (on Linux/Solaris)
• start-jira.bat (on Windows)

To run JIRA as the dedicated user account (e.g. 'jira') created above:

• On Windows, use the runas command to run start-jira.bat. For example,
  runas /env /user:<DOMAIN>\jira start-jira.bat
  (where <DOMAIN> is your Windows domain or computer name.)
• On Linux, switch to the 'jira' account using the su command before running start-jira.sh (or use su to run start-jira.sh as the 'jira' account).

Wait until the following message appears in the application's log file:

*******************************************************
 ... You can now access JIRA through your web browser.
*******************************************************

You can access JIRA from any computer with network access to your JIRA server by opening a supported web browser on the computer and visiting this URL:

• http://<computer_name_or_IP_address>:<HTTP_port_number>

where:

• <computer_name_or_IP_address> is the name or IP address of the computer on which JIRA is installed and
• <HTTP_port_number> is the HTTP port number (8080 by default).

If JIRA does not appear in your web browser, you may need to change the port that JIRA runs on.

Logs will be written to logs/catalina.out.

5. Run the Setup Wizard

See Running the Setup Wizard.

Next Steps

• See JIRA 101 to start creating Projects, creating Users, and customizing your JIRA instance.
• If you like to set up JIRA to start automatically every time you restart your computer, please see Starting JIRA Automatically on Linux or Running JIRA as a Service (for Windows).
• By default, JIRA installed from an archive uses the standard Tomcat port (i.e. 8080). If you need another application to run on that port, either now or in the future, please see Changing JIRA's TCP Ports.
• To get the most out of JIRA, please see Optimizing Performance.