Problem

JIRA fills your Hard disk with invincible orphaned files

Jira logging fills up my harddisk with an invisible, orphaned file ("atlassian-jira.log"). This file grows up to 43GB until the computer crashes as there is no disk space left. It occurs since I set up JIRA logging with a rotation log file. JIRA is running on a Windows 7 Enterprise PC on a NTFS formatted SSD.

Diagnosis

Environment

• Windows OS

Diagnostic Steps

• Unusually quick increase in JIRA log file size.

Cause

1. Plugin that cannot connect properly.
2. Path set for JIRA Log

Resolution

Case 1: Plugin:

• Find the culprit plugin in your atlassian-jira.log, stop JIRA and remove it from the plugins folder if it is a 3rd party plugin.
• Clear the plugin cache if it is a system plugin should issue persist despite a restart.

Case 2: Improperly Set JIRA Log Path

• Set just the file name instead of  full path to file else it would cause the orphaned files.