Jira Core 7.13.x upgrade notes
Here are some important notes on upgrading to Jira Core 7.13. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Jira Core 7.13 release notes.
Upgrade notes
Jira administrators
Apache Tomcat upgrade
We've upgraded Apache Tomcat to version 8.5.32, which requires that you make changes to the server.xml file.
What's the problem?
The Apache Tomcat server is filtering out requests that contain special characters, making them fail. That's because Tomcat is using a different encoding and URI standard than most browsers (details here). The problem is most visible when searching with JQL as you’d use a number of special characters when doing it (e.g. []<>), but it can also affect other pages in Jira.
Steps to take:
To solve the problem, edit the server.xml file, and add properties that make Tomcat accept special characters in the requests.
- Go to
<Jira-installation-directory>/conf, and edit theserver.xmlfile. - Find all connectors your application is using. Just search for Connector in the file, or look at the example below.
Add
relaxedPathChars="[]|" relaxedQueryChars="[]|{}^\`"<>"to the connector properties inserver.xml. For example:<Connector port="8080" relaxedPathChars="[]|" relaxedQueryChars="[]|{}^\`"<>" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" connectionTimeout="20000" enableLookups="false" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" protocol="HTTP/1.1" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100" disableUploadTimeout="true" bindOnInit="false"/>- Restart Jira.
New diagnostics info coming soon
After upgrading to Jira 7.13, you may see some new messages in your application log, and a new atlassian-diagnostics.log file, which is also included in support zips.
This is related to new diagnostic information we're working on. As a first step we will be introducing additional information about JQLs. Complex, heavy or just slow JQLs are among top contributors towards Jira instability. It will help us detect faster the problematic JQL and avoid downtime. No action is required for these messages for now.
We plan to fine-tune the thresholds and provide a UI for this diagnostic information in future Jira releases.
PostgreSQL 9.3 deprecated
Jira 7.12 and 7.13 have deprecated the use of PostgreSQL 9.3. In Jira 8.0, we'll be permanently removing the support for PostgreSQL 9.3. For more info, see End of support announcements.
Running Jira on OpenJDK
You can run Jira on OpenJDK 8. There are no special requirements you have to meet, just make sure you switch JAVA_HOME to your new OpenJDK after you install it. Here's a little guide on Installing Java.
New properties for configuring the JVM code cache
We've added properties for configuring the JVM code cache to the setenv.sh /.bat file. No actions are required, as the default configuration should be optimal for most Jira instances. We've made these changes to solve problems with the code cache (used by Jira to load installed apps) getting full. Learn more
This is what it looks like in the setenv.sh / .bat file:
JVM_CODE_CACHE_ARGS=-XX:InitialCodeCacheSize=32m;-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=512mPlugin developers
See Preparing for Jira 7.13 for any important changes regarding plugins.
Upgrade procedure
Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.
If you're already running a version of Jira, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:
- Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your installation directory, home directory, and database.
- Read the release notes and upgrade notes for all releases between your version and the latest version.
- Download the latest version of Jira.
- Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
Upgrading from earlier versions?
- 7.0, or later
Take a look at the upgrade matrix. It lists known issues you should be aware of when upgrading between multiple versions. - Earlier than 7.0
Consult the Migration hub. The Jira 7.0 release introduced significant changes. You must first upgrade to Jira 7.0 before upgrading to later versions.