Jira Software 7.12.x upgrade notes

Here are some important notes on upgrading to Jira Software 7.12. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, see the Jira Software 7.12.x release notes. 

Upgrade notes

Jira administrators

Upgrade to the DVCS plugin

If your Jira Software Server or Data Center instance is connected to Bitbucket Cloud, it’s through the Jira DVCS connector plugin.

Due to GDPR regulations and the personal data protection they require, we've needed to make some changes to the API's that Bitbucket Cloud has available. These changes happen in two phases. Phase one will be live on Bitbucket Cloud by the 10th of May, 2019, and Phase two will go live on the 1st of September, 2019.

What you need to do as a result is to upgrade your Jira Software instance or upgrade your Jira DVCS connector plugin to the relevant version. For more information, see Jira KB. 

Apache Tomcat upgrade

We've upgraded Apache Tomcat to version 8.5.32, which requires that you make changes to the server.xml file.

What's the problem?

The Apache Tomcat server is filtering out requests that contain special characters, making them fail. That's because Tomcat is using a different encoding and URI standard than most browsers (details here). The problem is most visible when searching with JQL as you’d use a number of special characters when doing it (e.g. []<>), but it can also affect other pages in Jira. 

Steps to take:

To solve the problem, edit the server.xml file, and add properties that make Tomcat accept special characters in the requests.

1. Go to <Jira-installation-directory>/conf, and edit the server.xml file.
2. Find all connectors your application is using. Just search for Connector in the file, or look at the example below.

3. Add relaxedPathChars="[]|" relaxedQueryChars="[]|{}^\`"<>" to the connector properties in server.xml. For example:

   <Connector port="8080" relaxedPathChars="[]|" relaxedQueryChars="[]|{}^&#x5c;&#x60;&quot;&lt;&gt;" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" connectionTimeout="20000" enableLookups="false" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" protocol="HTTP/1.1" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100" disableUploadTimeout="true" bindOnInit="false"/>

4. Restart Jira.
5. (Data Center) Repeat these steps on each node.

PostgreSQL 9.3 deprecated

Jira 7.12 has deprecated the use of PostgreSQL 9.3. In Jira 8.0, we'll be permanently removing the support for PostgreSQL 9.3. For more info, see End of support announcements.

New events in the audit log (filters and dashboards)

Note that, as described in the release notes, your users will be now able to share their filters and dashboards with permission to edit. We'll notify you about every change through new events in the audit log. Learn more about the audit log

Copying the index to other nodes (Jira Data Center)

As mentioned in the release notes, we’ve changed the default compression method used when copying the index between the nodes in Jira Data Center. To speed up the whole process, we’re now using Google’s Snappy instead of ZIP. If you’d like to change this method, you can do it by following these steps:

1. Edit the jira-config.properties file, as described in this kb article.
2. Edit the jira.index.snapshot.copy.archiver property (you can add it, if it’s not there).

3. Enter one of the following values: snappy (default), zip, or tar. For example:

   jira.index.snapshot.copy.archiver = zip

Plugin developers

See Preparing for Jira 7.12 for any important changes regarding plugins.

Upgrade procedure

Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.

If you're already running a version of Jira, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your installation directory, home directory, and database.
2. Read the release notes and upgrade notes for all releases between your version and the latest version.
3. Download the latest version of Jira.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Upgrading from earlier versions?

• 7.0, or later
  Take a look at the upgrade matrix. It lists known issues you should be aware of when upgrading between multiple versions.
  
  
• Earlier than 7.0
  Consult the Migration hub. The Jira 7.0 release introduced significant changes. You must first upgrade to Jira 7.0 (we recommend the latest bugfix release, in this case 7.0.11) before upgrading to later versions.