Symptoms

When filtering users from the page /secure/admin/user/UserBrowser.jspa (⚙ > User Management > Users), a null pointer exception is thrown in the UI.

Diagnosis

• The issue occurs on a Jira Data Center instance (not on a single node Jira instance)

• The following stack trace is found in the Jira application logs: 

  2020-09-15 20:17:34,004+0300 http-nio-8080-exec-12 ERROR username 1217x192x1 7wvs5d x.x.x.x /secure/admin/user/UserBrowser.jspa [c.a.j.w.a.admin.user.UserBrowser] Exception getting users: java.lang.NullPointerException
  java.lang.NullPointerException
  	at com.atlassian.jira.web.bean.UserBrowserFilter.lambda$getUserNamesFilteredByCriteria$0(UserBrowserFilter.java:173)
  	at java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$2$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:174)
  	at java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:193)
  	at java.util.ArrayList$ArrayListSpliterator.tryAdvance(ArrayList.java:1359)
  	at java.util.stream.StreamSpliterators$WrappingSpliterator.lambda$initPartialTraversalState$0(StreamSpliterators.java:294)
  	at java.util.stream.StreamSpliterators$AbstractWrappingSpliterator.fillBuffer(StreamSpliterators.java:206)
  	at java.util.stream.StreamSpliterators$AbstractWrappingSpliterator.doAdvance(StreamSpliterators.java:169)
  	at java.util.stream.StreamSpliterators$WrappingSpliterator.tryAdvance(StreamSpliterators.java:300)
  	at java.util.Spliterators$1Adapter.hasNext(Spliterators.java:681)
  	at com.google.common.collect.TransformedIterator.hasNext(TransformedIterator.java:42)
  	at com.google.common.collect.Iterators.addAll(Iterators.java:357)
  	at com.google.common.collect.Lists.newArrayList(Lists.java:147)
  	at com.google.common.collect.Lists.newArrayList(Lists.java:133)
  	at com.atlassian.jira.web.bean.UserBrowserFilter.getFilteredUsers(UserBrowserFilter.java:137)
  	at com.atlassian.jira.web.action.admin.user.UserBrowser.getBrowsableItems(UserBrowser.java:170)
  	at com.atlassian.jira.web.action.admin.user.UserBrowser.doExecute(UserBrowser.java:122)
  	... 1 filtered
  	at com.atlassian.jira.action.JiraActionSupport.execute(JiraActionSupport.java:63)
  	... 7 filtered
  	at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:741)
  	... 4 filtered
  	at com.enhancera.auditor.common.filter.WebEventsFilter.doFilter(WebEventsFilter.java:105)
  	... 27 filtered
  	at com.atlassian.greenhopper.jira.filters.ClassicBoardRouter.doFilter(ClassicBoardRouter.java:62)
  	... 7 filtered
  	at com.atlassian.jira.plugin.mobile.web.filter.MobileAppRequestFilter.doFilter(MobileAppRequestFilter.java:37)
  	... 4 filtered
  	at com.atlassian.jira.plugin.mobile.login.MobileLoginSuccessFilter.doFilter(MobileLoginSuccessFilter.java:54)
  	... 3 filtered
  	at com.atlassian.diagnostics.internal.platform.monitor.http.HttpRequestMonitoringFilter.doFilter(HttpRequestMonitoringFilter.java:55)
  	... 8 filtered

Cause

The error is thrown due to corrupted data in the user data cache: the user cache contains references to users which does not exist in the Jira database.

This type of user cache corruption might happen in the case where an XML backup coming from a production Jira Data Center was imported into a test Jira Data Center. In such case, the test Jira Data Center will contain the node information from the production Jira cluster, and might incorrectly overwrite the user cache in the production Jira Data Center.

Solution

• Schedule a downtime window outside of business hours, to prevent any impact on your operations
• Shutdown all the Jira nodes together from the Data Center cluster
• Startup each Jira node one by one
• The restart of all the Jira nodes should clear the user data cache and resolve this issue