Installing JIRA Standalone on Linux

This guide describes how to install a new JIRA Standalone installation on Linux using the automated 'Linux Installer'. If you are upgrading JIRA, please refer to the Upgrading JIRA guide.

You can also install JIRA Standalone from a 'zip' archive — see Installing JIRA Standalone from an Archive File on Windows, Linux or Solaris for details.

It is possible that any anti-virus or other Internet security tools installed on your Linux operating system may interfere with the JIRA installation process and prevent the process from completing successfully. If you experience or anticipate experiencing such an issue with your anti-virus/Internet security tool, disable this tool first before proceeding with the JIRA installation.

There are two ways to install JIRA Standalone using the Linux Installer:

On this page:

Using the Console Wizard

Use the console wizard if you are installing JIRA on your server for the first time or you wish to specify your installation options.

If you have previously installed JIRA using the installation wizard and wish to re-install JIRA again with the same installation options, you can re-install JIRA in 'unattended mode' without any user input required (see below for details).

1. Download and Install the JIRA Standalone 'Linux Installer'

If you execute the Linux Installer with 'root' user privileges, the installer will create and run JIRA using a dedicated user account. You can also execute the Linux Installer without 'root' user privileges, although your installation options will be much more limited and a dedicated user account (to run JIRA) will not be created. To run JIRA as a service, the Linux Installer must be executed with 'root' user privileges.

Download the appropriate JIRA Standalone 'Linux 64-bit / 32-bit Installer' (.bin) file from the JIRA Download page.
Please Note:
- To access the 32-bit installer, you may need to click the 'Show all' link on the 'JIRA Download' page to access the other installation packages.
- The difference between the 64-bit / 32-bit .bin installers relates to their bundled Java platforms that run JIRA. Bear in mind that a JIRA installation installed using the 64-bit installer may require additional memory (to run at a similar level of performance) to a JIRA installation installed using the 32-bit installer. This is because a 64-bit Java platform's object references are twice the size as those for a 32-bit Java platform.
Open a Linux console and change directory (cd) to the '.bin' file's directory.
If the '.bin' file is not executable after downloading it, make it executable, for example:
chmod a+x atlassian-jira-X.Y.bin
(where X.Y represents your version of JIRA)
Execute the '.bin' file to start the console wizard.
When prompted to choose between creating a new JIRA installation or upgrading an existing installation, choose the 'Create a new JIRA installation' option.
During subsequent steps of the console wizard, you will be prompted to customise the following options (which are pre-populated with default values):
- The 'Destination Directory' in which to install JIRA.
- The JIRA Home directory (which must be unique for each JIRA installation).
- The TCP ports (i.e. an HTTP and a Control port) that JIRA will run through.
- If you are running the installer with 'root' user privileges, you will be prompted to 'Run JIRA as a service' (recommended). You can also do this manually later, as described in Starting JIRA Standalone automatically on Linux.
The console wizard will install JIRA onto your operating system and will start JIRA automatically when the wizard finishes.

Please Note:

If you executed the Linux Installer with 'root' user privileges, the Linux Installer creates a dedicated Linux user account with username 'jira', which is used to run JIRA. This account has only:
- Full write access to your JIRA Home Directory.
- Limited write access to your JIRA Installation Directory.
If you executed the Linux Installer without 'root' user privileges, be aware that JIRA can still be run with 'root' privileges. However, to protect the security of your operating system, this is not recommended.

2. Start JIRA

If JIRA is not already started, you can start JIRA using the appropriate command at the Linux console.

Once JIRA is started, you can access JIRA from a browser on any computer with network access to your JIRA server.

2.1 Starting and Stopping JIRA manually

In the Linux console, enter the bin subdirectory of your JIRA installation directory and execute the appropriate file:

start-jira.sh (to start JIRA)
stop-jira.sh (to stop JIRA)

JIRA will be ready to access (from a browser window) when the following message appears in the application's log file:

*******************************************************
 ... You can now access JIRA through your web browser.
*******************************************************

2.2 Accessing JIRA from a Browser

You can access JIRA from any computer with network access to your JIRA server by opening a supported web browser on the computer and visiting this URL:

http://<computer_name_or_IP_address>:<HTTP_port_number>

where:

<computer_name_or_IP_address> is the name or IP address of the computer on which JIRA is installed and
<HTTP_port_number> is the HTTP port number specified when you installed JIRA (above).

If JIRA does not appear, you may need to change the port that JIRA runs on.

Note: Application server logs (i.e. for Apache Tomcat) will be written to logs/catalina.out.

3. Run the Setup Wizard

See Running the Setup Wizard.

4. Next Steps

See JIRA 101 to start creating Projects, creating Users, and customising your JIRA instance.
If you did not install JIRA Standalone to run as a service, you will need to start JIRA manually every time you restart your computer. To change your JIRA Standalone installation to run as a service, please see Starting JIRA Standalone automatically on Linux.
To get the most out of JIRA, please see Optimising Performance.

Performing an Unattended Installation

If you have previously installed JIRA using the console wizard (above), you can use a configuration file from this JIRA installation (called response.varfile) to re-install JIRA in 'unattended mode' without any user input required.

Installing JIRA in unattended mode saves you time if your previous JIRA installation was used for testing purposes and you need to install JIRA on multiple server machines based on the same configuration.