Symptoms

After performing JIRA upgrade, users are unable to create new issues. The Dialog-box appears, but when user press "Create" nothing happens.

The following appears in the atlassian-jira.log:

2013-09-09 11:38:39,396 http-bio-80-exec-21 ERROR      [500ErrorPage.jsp] Exception caught in 500 page com/opensymphony/user/EntityNotFoundException
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/opensymphony/user/EntityNotFoundException
	at com.pyxis.greenhopper.jira.listeners.GHSyncherListener.canPerform(GHSyncherListener.java:26)
	at com.pyxis.greenhopper.jira.customfields.GreenHopperCTFIndexer.issueCreated(GreenHopperCTFIndexer.java:48)
	at com.atlassian.jira.event.issue.AbstractIssueEventListener.workflowEvent(AbstractIssueEventListener.java:100)
	at com.atlassian.jira.event.issue.IssueEventListenerHandler$IssueEventInvoker.invoke(IssueEventListenerHandler.java:51)
	...
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.opensymphony.user.EntityNotFoundException
	at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl.findClassOrResourceByDelegation(ModuleImpl.java:772)
	at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl.access$200(ModuleImpl.java:73)
	at org.apache.felix.framework.ModuleImpl$ModuleClassLoader.loadClass(ModuleImpl.java:1690)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	... 213 more

Diagnosis

Normally, this scenario happens when the user is upgrading JIRA by pointing to the existing $JIRA-HOME directory. The same behavior is not reproducible when JIRA is running without any third party plugins.

To verify this, please refer to the steps below:

1. Shut down JIRA
2. Rename the $JIRA-HOME/plugins/installed-plugins directory to something else, the purpose is to JIRA to run without any plugin.
3. Recreate the $JIRA-HOME/plugins/installed-plugins and make sure it is empty.
4. Restart JIRA and reproduce the behavior.

If users are allowed to create issues, it is likely that there is an incompatible plugin's JAR file under the $JIRA-HOME/plugins/installed-plugins directory. Identify the offending plugin's jar by adding the individual plugin's jar and restart JIRA.

Cause

In this case, the JIRA Agile (formerly Greenhopper) plugin's JAR file still exists under the $JIRA-HOME/plugins/installed-plugins directory.

Resolution

Remove the offending plugin's jar and restart JIRA