"We can't enable the incoming authentication because <linkName> is not reachable." message when attempting to configure Tunneled Application Link

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. 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

Summary

When attempting to connect an Jira on-prem instance (Server or Data Center) to a Confluence cloud instance via an application tunnel, the link cannot be created and there is an error stating "We can't enable the incoming authentication because <linkName> is not reachable.". However the application tunnel is showing as connected.

Diagnosis

The Jira Application Links Health Check will fail with an error stating 'One of your application links is reporting "OAuth problem".'. Within the support zip generated from Jira in the healthchecks.txt file you will see the following:

1 2 3 4 5 Name: Application links NodeId: null Is healthy: false Failure reason: One of your application links is reporting "OAuth problem". Severity: WARNINGAdditional links: []

In addition, you can also observe the following within the atlassian-jira.log when the health check runs:

1 2022-10-13 17:58:14,412+0200 HealthCheck:thread-1 DEBUG ServiceRunner [o.apache.http.wire] http-outgoing-809711 << "oauth_problem=consumer_key_unknown"

⚠️ Observing the above message will require the o.apache.http.wire class to be configured to log at the DEBUG level. Please see Change logging levels in Jira Server for more information on setting up logging for a custom class.

Cause

This occurs when required connections and upstream ports are not configured within the Jira server.xml file for the on-prem Jira instance. The application tunnel requires an outgoing HTTP connector to be set in order for the Jira instance to communicate with the application tunnel.

Solution

Following the guide outlined within Configure required connections and upstream ports by adding the additional connector and JVM argument will allow the application link can be created successfully as a tunneled application link from the cloud.

Updated on April 11, 2025

Still need help?

The Atlassian Community is here for you.