Summary

The display of the Active Sprints and Backlog page is distorted/corrupted, as illustrated in the screenshots below:

Environment

Jira Software Server/Data Center 8.0.0 or any higher version.

Diagnosis

• Checking the application.xml file from the support zip, we can see that there is a mismatch between the Jira Core version and the Jira Software version, for example:
  

  • Jira Core is on 8.20.8

    <product name="Jira" version="8.20.8"/>

  • While Jira Software is on an older version like 8.13.5

    <plugin>
          <key>com.atlassian.jira.jira-software-application</key>
          <name>Jira Software Application</name>
          <version>8.13.5</version>
          <vendor>Atlassian</vendor>
          <status>ENABLED</status>
          <vendor-url>http://www.atlassian.com</vendor-url>
          <framework-version>2</framework-version>
          <bundled>User installed</bundled>
    </plugin>

• When checking the Jira application logs (<JIRA_HOME>/log/atlassian-jira.log.* files), we might see either of the 2 warnings below (although it is not guaranteed that these warnings will be thrown when this issue happens):

  • Example of warning 1

    2022-04-25 09:18:33,057+0800 http-nio-8080-exec-2 WARN anonymous 558x7622x2 XXXXXX XXX.XXX.XX.XX /s/e86910431a6093c077428fea19127651-CDN/-rbnesh/820008/1dlckms/851b8f73b6c5a51642611be0f2d40949/_/download/contextbatch/css/atl.dashboard,jira.global,atl.general,jira.dashboard,-_super/batch.css [webresource] error in `Content.writeTo` for com.pyxis.greenhopper.jira:gh-rapid-common-css/gh-dialog.css
    com.atlassian.lesscss.UnresolvableImportException: Cannot find plugin://com.atlassian.jira.plugins.jira-ui/less/jira-colors.less
    	at com.atlassian.lesscss.RhinoLessCompiler.newLessException(RhinoLessCompiler.java:94)
    	at com.atlassian.lesscss.RhinoLessCompiler.compile(RhinoLessCompiler.java:78)
    	at com.atlassian.plugins.less.LessResource.transform(LessResource.java:42)
    	at com.atlassian.plugin.webresource.transformer.CharSequenceDownloadableResource$1.apply(CharSequenceDownloadableResource.java:44)
    	at com.atlassian.plugin.webresource.transformer.CharSequenceDownloadableResource$1.apply(CharSequenceDownloadableResource.java:42)

  • Example of warning 2

    2022-04-25 09:01:33,331+0800 http-nio-8080-exec-10 WARN someuser 541x6408x1 XXXXXX XXX.XXX.XX.XX /rest/webResources/1.0/resources [webresource] error thrown in transformer during url generation for com.atlassian.jira.plugins.jira-development-integration-plugin:8
    com.google.common.util.concurrent.UncheckedExecutionException: java.lang.NullPointerException
    	at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$Segment.get(LocalCache.java:2050)
    	at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache.get(LocalCache.java:3952)
    	at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache.getOrLoad(LocalCache.java:3974)
    	at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$LocalLoadingCache.get(LocalCache.java:4958)
    	at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$LocalLoadingCache.getUnchecked(LocalCache.java:4964)
    	at com.atlassian.plugins.less.CachingUriStateManager.collectUriState(CachingUriStateManager.java:104)

Cause

The exact root cause is unclear at this moment. However, it is likely that for some reason, the Jira Software upgrade did not go smoothly all the way, and only the Jira Core version was updated, while the Jira Software application is still on an older version. As a result, Jira Software is running on a version which is incompatible with the Jira Core version, leading to display issues in any page that is managed by the Jira Software application (boards, sprints, backlog, etc...).

Solution

To fix this issue, you will need to upgrade the Jira Software application to make sure that it is running on the same version as Jira Core. One way to do it is to is from the Jira UI:

• Go to the page ⚙ > Applications > Versions & Licenses
• Click on the Upgrade button next to the Jira Software application