Useful log files in Jira Data Center
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Purpose
As an administrator of Jira Data Center, it can be helpful to see a list of log files Jira creates and their locations, particularly for ingress into a log monitoring solution such as Splunk.
Solution
The following table lists the log files Jira creates and their default location and filename.
Logging is written by default to two locations: “logs” directory in the Jira installation directory and “log” directory in the Jira Home directory.
Location | Log Filename | Log Purpose | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
JIRA_INSTALL/ | access_log.YYYY-mm-dd | HTTP access log (Tomcat) | A list of each request that Jira node completed processing. Logged by the Tomcat application server |
atlassian-jira-gc-YYYY | Garbage collection log | Written by the JVM to describe how Java heap memory management takes place, and what memory is in use. Critical when diagnosing out of memory errors or memory contention problems | |
catalina.out | Tomcat application server stdout | The stdout of the Tomcat application server process. This file isn't managed by Jira's logging solution log4j, so the format of entries here varies. OutOfMemoryError is logged here. | |
JIRA_HOME/ | atlassian-jira.log* | Primary Jira log file | Generic log location, including logs that aren’t specifically directed elsewhere |
atlassian-greenhopper.log | Jira Software Agile Board log | Logging written by the Jira Software plugin | |
atlassian-servicedesk.log* | Jira Service Management log | Logging written by the Jira Service Management plugin | |
atlassian-jira-security.log* | Security Log | Records login success/failure transactions, session creation and destruction, along with certain authentication related debug logging if enabled | |
atlassian-jira-apdex.log* | Apdex log | Apdex performance statistics | |
atlassian-jira-http-access.log* | HTTP access log (Jira) | A HTTP access log implemented by Jira itself when HTTP access log debug is enabled. Tomcat's access log is typically recommended over this log, since it is always enabled, has lower performance overhead, and provides almost all information that this access log provides. Due to the risk to performance, we don't recommend enabling Jira's access log in enterprise scale production instances except in certain edge cases | |
atlassian-jira-http-dump.log* | HTTP dump log (Jira) | An extremely verbose HTTP dump log, written by Jira. Only written if HTTP dump logging is enabled. Due to the risk to performance, we don't recommend enabling Jira's access log in enterprise scale production instances. | |
atlassian-jira-incoming-mail.log* | Incoming mail | Incoming mail debug log. Only written to if Incoming Mail Debug is enabled | |
atlassian-jira-outgoing-mail.log* | Outgoing mail | Outgoing mail debug log. Only written to if Outgoing Mail Debug is enabled | |
atlassian-jira-perf.log* | Performance statistics | A variety of useful performance metrics about the application and underlying system, for example, database latency, tomcat thread pool utilisation, system/process CPU consumption, and DBCP (database connection) pool utilisation | |
atlassian-jira-querydsl-sql.log* | QueryDSL debug log | QueryDSL debug log, a SQL abstraction layer used by some Jira functions/plugins | |
atlassian-jira-slow-queries.log* | Slow JQL log | Records JQL query and their source for executions over the threshold of 400ms | |
atlassian-jira-slow-querydsl-queries.log* | Slow QueryDSL log | A record of slowly performing QueryDSL SQL queries | |
atlassian-jira-sql.log* | SQL Debug Log | A list of SQL queries sent by the application's ofbiz library when SQL debug logging is enabled | |
| atlassian-jira-app-monitoring.log* | App performance stats | Instrumentation of first and third party app performance such as the count and time spent on database operations, issue/comment indexing, and cache removals | |
| atlassian-jira-ipd-monitoring.log* | In-product-diagnostics | Additional performance metrics generated by the "In product diagnostics" plugin | |
jira-diagnostics.log | Diagnostic Alerts | A variety of useful performance statistics, usually logged when a certain theshold is reached. For instance, slowly performing HTTP requests, high scheduler thread pool utilisation, and so on | |
| JIRA_HOME/ log/audit | YYYYmmdd.00000.audit.log | Audit logging | Filesystem historical logging of audit data |
| JIRA_HOME/ log/jfr | atst_in_product_diagnostic_ YYYY_MM_DD_HH_mm_ss.jfr | Java Flight Recorder | A low level capture of performance statistics from the JVM - rolling N minutes for N bytes |
| atst_in_product_diagnostic_ dump_on_exit_YYYY_ MM_DD_HH_mm_ss.jfr | Java Flight Recorder | A low level capture of performance statistics from the JVM (auto-generated on exit) | |
| JIRA_INSTALL/.install4j | installation.log | Jira installer logs | Records all the steps performed by the Jira Installer binary. Not applicable when Jira is installed manually via tgz file or container |
The log files with a star "*" in the end indicate that the logs roll over. For example, the latest file is atlassian-jira.log, then atlassian-jira.log.1, then atlassian-jira.log.2 and so on.
Most logging is managed by Log4j via the log4j2.xml file within the Jira application installation directory