Purpose

This article explains how to install Jira as a systemd service in Linux. 

Pre-requisites

Jira is installed and working but does not automatically start on boot. For example, Jira is installed via the .zip package rather than the .bin installer, or you have migrated JIRA to a different server.

Solution

• 1. Login to the Jira application server as the root user.

  2. Create the following systemd unit file for the JIRA service as root:

     touch /lib/systemd/system/jira.service
     chmod 664 /lib/systemd/system/jira.service

  3. Edit the systemd unit file as root:

     vi /lib/systemd/system/jira.service

  4. Add the following content into the systemd unit file to define the JIRA service:

     [Unit] 
     Description=Atlassian Jira
     After=network.target
     
     [Service] 
     Type=forking
     User=jira
     LimitNOFILE=20000
     PIDFile=/opt/atlassian/jira/work/catalina.pid
     ExecStart=/opt/atlassian/jira/bin/start-jira.sh
     ExecStop=/opt/atlassian/jira/bin/stop-jira.sh
     
     [Install] 
     WantedBy=multi-user.target 

      The above defined 'jira' user would be the user that is used to run JIRA, change this if you are running JIRA under a different user.

     '/opt/atlassian/jira' would be the default Jira installation path, change this if your Jira installation path is different.
     Do not run Jira in the foreground, as this will prevent the file 'catalina.out' from being created. 

     
     

     Commands to run the scripts in the selinux context

     chcon -t bin_t install/bin/start-jira.sh
     chcon -t bin_t install/bin/stop-jira.sh

      Note: When running SELinux in enforcing mode it may be necessary to pass the start/stop of Jira to the bash shell, like such:

     ExecStart=/bin/bash /opt/atlassian/jira/bin/start-jira.sh
     ExecStop=/bin/bash /opt/atlassian/jira/bin/stop-jira.sh

  5. Enable the service and start it:

     systemctl daemon-reload
     systemctl enable jira.service
     systemctl start jira.service
     systemctl status jira.service

     In some instances, you may see the following error message when attempting to enable the Jira service: 

     systemctl enable jira.service
     Synchronizing state of jira.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
     Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable jira
     update-rc.d: error: jira Default-Start contains no runlevels, aborting.

     This may be due to a previously created Jira service file. To resolve this, users may perform the following depending on their environment:
     
     

     Commands to run the scripts in the selinux context

     chcon -t bin_t install/bin/start-jira.sh
     chcon -t bin_t install/bin/stop-jira.sh

  6. If the file exists, backup up the previous Jira service file and then remove it before enabling the new Jira service file:

     cp /etc/init.d/jira /opt/atlassian/jira-init.d.bak && rm /etc/init.d/jira
     sudo systemctl enable jira.service
     Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/jira.service → /lib/systemd/system/jira.service.

     Furthermore, we recommend either disabling SELinux policies or thoroughly validating them.