Unable to Access JIRA due to Document Base does not Exist or is not a Readable Directory

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Symptoms

Starting JIRA on a WAR install using Tomcat throws a java.lang.IllegalArgumentException and JIRA is not accessible.

The following appears in catalina.out:

SEVERE: Error starting static Resources
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Document base /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/jira does not exist or is not a readable directory
	at org.apache.naming.resources.FileDirContext.setDocBase(FileDirContext.java:140)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.resourcesStart(StandardContext.java:4894)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5074)
	at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:895)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:871)
	at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:615)
	at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor(HostConfig.java:649)
	at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployDescriptor.run(HostConfig.java:1581)
	at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
	at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:679)

Cause

The JIRA WAR file cannot be found or the docBase parameter contains special characters. For example:

<Context path="/jira" docBase="/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/jira_5.2.1/jira_5.2.1.war" debug="0" useHttpOnly="true">

Resolution

Modify the docBase parameter so that it is not using special characters. For example, the above configuration would be fixed with the following:

  1. Stop Tomcat.
  2. Rename the jira_5.2.1 directory and the jira_5.2.1.war file so they no longer include special characters.
  3. Update the server.xml, for example:

    <Context path="/jira" docBase="/var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/jira/jira.war" debug="0" useHttpOnly="true">
  4. Start Tomcat, checking the catalina.out file to verify that it can now be started.
Last modified on Mar 30, 2016

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