Symptoms

The following appears in the atlassian-jira.log:

Caused by: com.atlassian.jira.util.LuceneUtils$DateParsingException: Input is not valid date string: -52011019205859

Cause

An invalid date has been added to the database and this has cause the Lucene index parsing to fails for that invalid date string.

Workaround

• Download Lucene Index Toolbox of the latest lukeall.jar from this page.
• Run it with the command java -jar lukeall.jar
• This will open a window similar to the below screenshot
  
• Set the Path to be JIRA_HOME/caches/indexes/issues and click OK
• Go to the Search tab

• Fill in the following into the field Enter search expression here (this depends on the error string shown in the logs; see above):

  "-52011019205859"
  

• Select created from Default field in the Analysis tab. Try any other date field also.
• Click on the button Search
• From the Results, look for the column key

• Run the following SQL query according to the issue key found:

  SELECT * FROM jiraissue WHERE pkey="<issue_key>";
  

• Confirm the column that has the invalid date and modify it; for example:

  UPDATE jiraissue SET CREATED='2011-11-29 22:58:59' WHERE pkey="<issue_key>";
  

  Always back up your data before performing any modification to the database. If possible, try your modifications on a test server.

• Shutdown JIRA
• Delete the index directory JIRA_HOME/caches
• Restart JIRA and reindex