Jira config properties flag jira.upgrade.force.manual.schedule can stall upgrade or result in incomplete upgrade
Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Summary
We can currently control the upgrade behavior with flags in jira-config.properties file located under $JIRA_HOME/ . One of the flags, jira.upgrade.force.manual.schedule can be used to stall intermediate upgrades when you are migrating from a very old Jira version to newer version. This type of large version jumps might require you to upgrade to a certain base version before proceeding to target Jira version.
Environment
8.13.1 or 9.x
Diagnosis
Having the flags set even during direct upgrade without intermediate upgrades can cause Jira upgrades to be half complete and result in unexpected behavior. The problem would be evident with a logging similar to below in the application log.
2023-01-30 11:07:44,327-0400 localhost-startStop-1 INFO [c.a.jira.upgrade.DelayedUpgradeService] Upgrades not scheduled, jira.upgrade.force.manual.schedule=trueIn one scenario, the upgrade to 8.13 from 8.5 was done without enabling the new feature flags related to Document Based Replication and hence resorting to the old index replication mode. Similar problem can arise if you were to use the same above flag for upgrade from 8.x to 9.x which requires a forced re-index and upgrade for newer changes in architecture.
Solution
In case some of the functionalities are missing after a upgrade or errors related to incompatibility of column types are thrown during the startup, verify for any such flags in the jira-config.properties to ensure that undesirable flags are disabled.