Jira Data Center won't start - Startup check failed
Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles 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
Jira won't start. A startup check fails, as is logged in the catalina.out log:
<timestamp> JIRA-Bootstrap FATAL [c.a.jira.startup.JiraStartupLogger] Startup check failed. Jira will be locked. Diagnosis
Check the log catalina.out for startup errors. If you see "Startup check failed. Jira will be locked", after the lines about database password decryption, you may have a filesystem problem.
The failure attributable to filesystem write privileges will be in between unrelated lines about the database and the startup being successful:
2023-05-10 14:07:54,257-0400 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO [c.a.j.config.database.DatabaseConfigHandler] Trying to get encrypted password from xml and decrypt it
2023-05-10 14:07:54,258-0400 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO [c.a.j.config.database.DatabaseConfigHandler] Database password decryption not performed.
2023-05-10 14:07:54,392-0400 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO [c.a.jira.startup.JiraStartupLogger] Running Jira startup checks.
2023-05-10 14:07:54,393-0400 JIRA-Bootstrap FATAL [c.a.jira.startup.JiraStartupLogger] Startup check failed. Jira will be locked.
2023-05-10 14:07:54,460-0400 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO [c.a.jira.startup.LauncherContextListener] Startup is complete. Jira is ready to serve.
2023-05-10 14:07:54,462-0400 JIRA-Bootstrap INFO [c.a.jira.startup.LauncherContextListener] Memory Usage:Cause
Jira cannot write to the shared home.
This may be because the user does not have adequate permissions, because the shared home is not writable in general, etc.
Solution
Confirm that the user running Jira has access to the shared home location.