Jira Software 8.12.x upgrade notes

Here are some important notes on upgrading to Jira Software 8.12.

For details on the new features and improvements in this release, see the Jira Software 8.12.x release notes. 

 Upgrade notes

Known issue: Modal dialogs don't open on pages that use cross-origin iFrames

A number of actions in Jira are configured in modal dialogs (pop-ups) — for example, when you click Edit next to an item, we’ll often open the edit settings in the modal rather than move you to a separate page.

Problem

In Jira 8.12.2 and 8.13.0, these modal dialogs might not open on pages that use cross-origin iFrames. An example of this could be a cross-origin iFrame added to the Jira banner to collect some statistics. Because of this problem, you won’t be able to complete actions that rely on modal dialogs — these might include editing permissions, starting sprints, or editing comments in Jira Service Management requests. More about this bug

Affected versions

• 8.12.2, 8.13.0

Fixed versions

We have already fixed this problem in the following bugfix releases:

• 8.12.3, 8.13.1

Known issue: Sprint suggestions aren’t working

The Sprint picker field (used either when creating/editing issues or searching for sprints) suggests the last five sprints you viewed. If you haven’t viewed at least five, Jira will retrieve all existing sprints and calculate which are the best suggestions for you. Because of a bug, Jira isn’t retrieving additional sprints, so you’re seeing suggestions that are based only on your history.

More about this problem: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSWSERVER-20679

Affected versions: 8.11.x, 8.12.x, 8.13.0

Fixed versions: 8.13.1+, 8.14.0+ 

Workaround: The only workaround right now is building your history so Jira can show suggestions based on it. To do this, you have to visit backlogs that include sprints you’re interested in. Follow this bug for updates

Note: Upgrading to one of the fixed versions might cause performance issues in large Jira instances with thousands of sprints. See Sprint picker field might cause performance issues. 

Setting to prevent phishing attacks (8.12.1+)

To prevent non-authenticated users from navigating to crafted URLs in Jira and injecting messages onto the page, we've added a setting that disables displaying URL parameters in security dialogs. 

The setting is available in Jira administration > System > General configuration and defaults to Off. 

If the setting is disabled, the URL parameters that might be added to a URL are not captured and displayed in security dialogs. In that case, a security dialog looks the following:

New system property to speed up database search

We're introducing a new mechanism that retrieves custom field values for issues in batches of 50. This speeds up time-consuming operations such as database search. 

For now, all these improvements affect only Jira built-in custom fields. We’re also opening an experimental API to help you leverage these improvements. For details, see Batch custom field value retrieval API. 

You can configure this feature with the jira.custom.field.indexing.batch.size property. Setting its value to 1 disables batching (values for each issue will be fetched separately). Setting any other number defines the number of issues that will be batched. For example, setting 40 as the value will mean the issues will be fetched in batches of 40.

To disable batching, add the following value to setenv.sh:

-Djira.custom.field.indexing.batch.size=1

To benefit from this change, a full reindex needs to be performed.

Known issue: Azure SQL is reported as an unsupported database

If you’re running Jira with the Microsoft Azure SQL database, you will get warnings saying that you’re using an unsupported database. That’s because Azure SQL is mistakenly reported as SQL Server 2014, and we’ve ended support for this one in this release.

Solution: 

We’re working on the update of the Atlassian Troubleshooting and Support Tools app. For now, discard the warnings and wait for the available update. Your database is fine.

Known issue: MySQL 8.0 is reported as misconfigured

If you use the Jira configuration tool to connect Jira to MySQL 8.0, the health check will display the following warning about a problem with connection settings:

The following database configuration are not set as per our recommended settings: 'validation query, validation-query-timeout 

Workaround:

The warning is caused by missing entries in the dbconfig.xml file that weren’t added by the configuration tool. To fix this, edit the dbconfig.xml file and add the following entries and restart Jira:

<validation-query>select 1</validation-query>
<validation-query-timeout>3</validation-query-timeout> 

Increase your pool-max-size before upgrade

If you're upgrading from Jira 7.x to Jira 8.x we recommend changing the pool-max-size parameter to 40 in your dbconfig.xml before the upgrade. Leaving the default of 20 can sometimes lead to “ResultSet Closed” errors during re-indexing on 8.x. For information on implementing the change, see Tuning database connections.

An important bugfix requires full reindex

We fixed a bug that caused issues removed from sprint not showing in Burndown Chart or Sprint Report. The problem will automatically be fixed for all the newly created and edited issues and they will display in the Sprint Report and Burndown Chart.
If you are not concerned about the past issues, you don’t have to take any action. However, if you want to be sure all the past and current issues get fixed too, you need to perform a full reindex.

A bug in Tomcat causing issues on upgrade

Tomcat started to use double-quotes as of version 8.5.48 as a result of Expansion of JAVA_OPTS in catalina.sh containing '*' stops startup on linux bug. That's why when you upgrade to Jira 8.12 and set parameters in setenv.sh or setenv.bat, make sure that you:

• Don't remove the double-quotes in the catalina.sh
• Set all your parameters in one line without any new line in setenv.sh or setenv.bat

Otherwise you might experience issues starting up Jira. 

Audit log system property change

We've made a change to the system property that can be used to restrict the audit log to system administrators only.  Set this property to true  if you want to prevent people with Jira Administrator global permission from accessing the audit log. 

Database password encryption

We're now using Base64 encoding to encode all new and existing mail server passwords. As a result the mailpassword field isn't plain text any longer. 

Extended API response to look for archived projects

We've added an archived field with the current status to each project in response to <host>/rest/api/latest/project?expand=description,lead,url,projectKeys&includeArchived=<boolean>.

New events in the Advanced audit log DATA CENTER

We are adding new events to track priority (Created, deleted updated) and secure admin login (websudo) for you to have better insight into your application. 

 End of support announcements

In Jira 8.12, we're ending support for:

• MySQL 5.6
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014

For more details, see End of support announcements.

 App developers

See Preparing for Jira 8.12 for any important changes regarding apps.

 Upgrade procedure

Upgrading from a Jira version 8.x.x? 

See Upgrading Jira applications for complete upgrade procedures, including all available upgrade methods and pre-upgrade steps. For a more tailored upgrade, go to Jira administration > Applications > Plan your upgrade. We’ll recommend a version to upgrade to, run pre-upgrade checks, and provide you with a custom upgrade guide with step-by-step instructions.