Purpose

This page defines how to configure JIRA applications such that they can communicate externally through an outbound proxy. This is required to access servers outside the network it's hosted in, such as the Atlassian Marketplace. If you wish to host JIRA applications behind a reverse-proxy (or inbound proxy), please refer to Integrating JIRA with Apache or Integrating JIRA with Apache using SSL.

Adding JVM properties

All properties discussed in this article are Java Virtual Machine (JVM) parameters.

 For complete instructions on the process of adding properties to the JVM on startup, please see our Setting Properties and Options on Startup documentation.  This documentation also explains how to verify the settings have taken effect.

Proxy configuration

Proxy Support is configured in JIRA applications by passing certain system properties to the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) on startup. These properties follow the conventions defined by Oracle:

• http.proxyHost
• http.proxyPort (default: 80)
• http.nonProxyHosts (default: <none>)
• https.proxyHost
• https.proxyPort

The http.proxyHost property must be defined to configure an HTTP proxy, and https.proxyHost for an HTTPS proxy.

The http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort properties indicate the proxy server and the port that the HTTP protocol handler will use. For example:

-Dhttp.proxyHost=proxy.example.org -Dhttp.proxyPort=8080 -Dhttps.proxyHost=proxy.example.org -Dhttps.proxyPort=8080 -Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=localhost

The property http.nonProxyHosts indicates the hosts which should be connected to directly and not through the proxy server. The value can be a list of hosts, each separated by a ( | ), and in addition a wildcard character ( * ) can be used for matching. For example:

-Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=*.foo.com|localhost|confluence|crowd

If the http.nonProxyHosts property is not configured, all web requests will be routed through the proxy. For example, if connecting Confluence and JIRA applications together with Application Links, we would recommend bypassing the proxy and communicating on the internal network with this property. Routing through the proxy can have ramifications when taking into account IP validation on those links - the source IP of the server can be different depending on how the traffic is routed.

-Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=localhost|jira.atlassian.com

Application Links

If connecting JIRA applications to any other applications, the application URL should be added to the nonProxyHosts argument. Otherwise what can happen is when JIRA applications attempt to talk to another Atlassian application the HTTP request can timeout, or not resolve. This will prevent the applications from linking. For example when connecting JIRA applications to Confluence (located on confluence.atlassian.com):

-Dhttp.nonProxyHosts=localhost|*.atlassian.com

Configuring Authentication

Proxy authentication is configured by passing the below properties to Java, as in our Setting Properties and Options on Startup documentation.

• http.proxyUser – username
• http.proxyPassword – secret
• https.proxyUser
• https.proxyPassword

For example:

-Dhttp.proxyUser=atlaspirate -Dhttp.proxyPassword=yarrrrr -Dhttps.proxyUser=atlaspirate -Dhttps.proxyPassword=yarrrrr

Microsoft ISA NTLM Authentication

As in our JIRA is Unable to Use NTLM Authentication KB article, JIRA applications do not currently support all configurations of NTLM authentication. However, to configure this with the JVM, the below property is used:

-Dhttp.auth.ntlm.domain=DOMAIN

Configuring Authentication Order

There are three authentication mechanisms provided - ntlm, digest & basic in that order by default. It is possible to change the order and also not exclude one or more methods altogether. This can be done with the following property.

-Dhttp.proxyAuth=basic,ntlm

In this example, the authentication order will be basic and then ntlm only - digest will not be used.