Symptoms

Crowd Embedded was introduced in JIRA 4.3.x making the full integration with LDAP now available in the JIRA install itself, avoiding the need of integration with a external Crowd instance. On the other hand, during the upgrade from a previous version to JIRA 4.3.x, if user management was once delegated to external Crowd and this integration is removed, users are not migrated to JIRA internal user database.

Common questions:

We are using Jira 4.1 with Crowd and as I prepare for the upgrade (and server move) I need to know if Crowd install will be necessary. I understand the LDAP functionality is now build into Jira so what shall I do?

How do I go about switching to non-Crowd use when I migrate? I have the standalone 4.3 version up on our new server and prefer to import my xml backup. However shouldn't I do something about LDAP integration before importing? The import will expect I am using Crowd still.

Cause

Atlassian does not provide a path to migrate user information from Crowd to JIRA during the upgrade. This is by design. If you previous installation of JIRA was integrated with Crowd, all users, groups and membership information will be saved on Crowd database. Therefore if during the upgrade the external instance of Crowd is not available or if upgrade notes for Crowd integrated were not follow, JIRA will NOT recreate the users locally.

Workaround

If Crowd was used to manage the users from JIRA using LDAP, then an external Crowd installation is not necessary, users can be managed directly in JIRA using the new LDAP management.

However, if other Atlassian Tools (Confluence, Fisheye, Bamboo, Crucible, etc) are being used, it might be necessary to continue using an external Crowd for user management.

If external Crowd installation is no longer necessary,a workaround would be:

1. Make sure all the users, groups and memberships exist in LDAP previously from the upgrade.

3. Proceed with the upgrade following upgrade notes for Crowd integrated. This will create a Crowd user directory in the upgrade JIRA install.

4. Manually integrate JIRA with LDAP by following these instructions.

5. Disable Crowd User Directory in JIRA.