Documentation for JIRA 4.1. Documentation for other versions of JIRA is available too.

In order to provide fast searching, JIRA creates an index of the text entered into issue fields. This index is stored on the file system, and updated whenever issue text is added or modified. It is sometimes necessary to regenerate this index manually; for instance if issues have been manually entered into the database, or the index has been lost or corrupted.

Indexing Administration

  1. Log in as a user with the 'JIRA Administrators' global permission.
  2. Bring up the administration page by clicking either the 'Administration' link on the top bar or the title of the Administration box on the dashboard.
  3. Under the 'System' sub-menu on the left, click the 'Indexing' link.
  4. This page allows you to:
    • re-index your data — whenever you re-index data, JIRA will clear any existing indexes and re-index all the current data from scratch. This may take a few minutes, depending on how many issues you have, and users will be unable to access JIRA during this time.
    • optimise your indexes
    • move your indexes to another directory — by default, your indexes are located in your JIRA home directory under the caches/indexes sub-directory. Note that only people with the 'JIRA System Administrators' global permission can move the index.

Note about JIRA performance and changing your index path


If you are running a high load JIRA instance, you may wish to consider moving your indexes from the default directory under JIRA home to another machine. The directory which holds your indexes is heavily accessed while JIRA is running. Hence, your JIRA instance may run more efficiently by hosting the indexes on the fastest disk available and reducing the number of other applications using the same disk to reduce access contention.

However, if you see the following message at the top of the page,

Changing the attachment, index, backup or restore settings is not allowed for security reasons. You must edit jira-application.properties and explicitly set 'jira.paths.set.allowed=true'. Restart JIRA and then the path settings will be able to be changed.

then you must first configure your JIRA installation to permit modification to its file path settings. To do this:

  1. Follow the procedure for Enabling Modification to JIRA's File Path Settings, which requires JIRA to be shut down and restarted.
  2. Restart this particular procedure from step 1 (above).

If you move your index directory, please ensure that it is given appropriate security, as described in Security Overview.

Screenshot: Indexing JIRA

If you changed your index path (above), it is strongly recommended that you follow the procedure for Securing JIRA's File Path Settings to minimise the risk of your JIRA installation being compromised by security-related attacks.



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