Problem

During upgrade, the installer failed when tried to validate home directory. The error you see in the Terminal/CMD will be misleading because it will state that:

An error occurred when parsing your installation directory. Unfortunately the installer will be unable to continue with the automated upgrade.

The following appears in the Terminal/CMD:

[root@XXX]# ./atlassian-jira-6.4.6-x64.bin
Unpacking JRE ...
Starting Installer ...
Jul 09, 2015 4:51:04 PM java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferences$2 run
INFO: Created system preferences directory in java.home.

This will install JIRA 6.4.6 on your computer.
OK [o, Enter], Cancel [c]
o
Choose the appropriate installation or upgrade option.
Please choose one of the following:
Express Install (use default settings) [1], Custom Install (recommended for advanced users) [2], Upgrade an existing JIRA installation [3, Enter]
3
Existing installation directory:
[/opt/atlassian/jira/atlassian-jira-6.1.7-standalone]

An error occurred when parsing your installation directory. Unfortunately the installer will be unable to continue with the automated upgrade.
Finishing installation ...
[root@XXX]#

Diagnosis

Please check if the permission of all the files related to JIRA is correct. Ensure that only the following directories can be written to by this dedicated user account (e.g. 'jira'):

• The following subdirectories of your JIRA Installation Directory for 'recommended' JIRA distributions (or for JIRA WAR distributions, the installation directory of the Apache Tomcat application running JIRA):

• • logs
  • temp
  • work
• Your JIRA Home Directory.

 Do not make the JIRA Installation Directory itself writable by the dedicated user account.

Cause

JIRA Home Directory is not defined in jira-application.properties file rather it's defined in one of the JVM arguments. JIRA can still run even if the JIRA Home Directory is defined in JVM argument instead of jira-application.properties file. But the upgrade installer script is hardcoded to looking into jira-application.properties. There is a closed feature request to improve this; JRA-44645 - Getting issue details... STATUS . The location of the file is:

<jira-application-dir>/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/jira-application.properties

Resolution

1. Make sure JIRA is not running.
2. Remove the JVM argument: -Djira.home=/opt/atlassian/jira/home. Please refer to Setting Properties and Options on Startup.
3. Edit jira-application.properties to include jira.home = /opt/atlassian/jira/home. For windows, it will be jira.home = C:\\Program Files\\Atlassian\\Application Data\\JIRA6.2.
4. Start JIRA.
   Note: The path for JIRA Home Directory above is for example purpose only. Please alter it as how your environment is.