Symptoms

JIRA logs are filled with warning messages related to JSESSIONID. The following appears in the atlassian-jira.log:

2013-03-20 13:13:32,316 http-bio-8443-exec-3193 INFO someuser 793x1054102x2 1k3wdtt someipaddress /browse/main-62735 [jira.web.util.CookieUtils] Found multiple JSESSIONID cookies, when rendering link to screenshot applet page. You may have another Java webapp at context path '/' (in which case this message is harmless), or there may be a problem in IE attaching the screenshot via the screenshot applet.

Cause

This error log indicates that JIRA is finding that the cookies stored in the client browsers indicate other applications sharing the same host/path. This is mostly due to the following:

1. Other applications hosted on the same host.
2. JIRA instance reinstalled and the clients have saved cookies of older instances.

Workaround

Clearing the client browser cache is will stop this log getting generated which is not always practical if there are a lot of clients. In that case this specifc log can be disabled by doing the following.

Method 1

1. Add the below line to atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties 

   log4j.logger.com.atlassian.jira.web.util.CookieUtils = ERROR, console, filelog

2. Restart JIRA.

Method 2

Add the below additional JVM argument (Refer Setting Properties and Options on Startup for details on how to add JVM arguments)

-Dorg.apache.catalina.SESSION_COOKIE_NAME=UNIQUE_NAME_FOR_JIRAJSESSIONID