Upgrading JIRA Manually

Please read/perform all steps and sub-steps in consecutive order.

1. Before You Start

1. You will need current software maintenance  to perform the upgrade. If you are unsure, confirm the following:
   • Your license support period is still valid.
   • If your current license has expired but you have a new license with you, please update your license in JIRA.
     If you forget to do this and your license has expired, you will receive errors during the upgrade process. Refer to the instructions on upgrading beyond current license period.
2. Read the release notes and upgrade guide  for the version of JIRA you are upgrading to. The upgrade guide (in particular) contains important information that may be relevant to your JIRA installation.
   • If you plan to skip a few JIRA versions for your next JIRA upgrade, we strongly recommend that you read the upgrade guides for all major versions between your current version and the version to which you are upgrading. Refer to Important Version-Specific Upgrade Notes for quick links to these guides.
3. Confirm that your operating system, database, other applicable platforms and hardware still comply with the requirements for JIRA 5.0.x. Newer versions of JIRA may have different requirements and supported platforms to previous JIRA versions.
   The End of Support Announcements for JIRA page also has important information regarding platform support for future versions of JIRA.
4. Some anti-virus or other Internet security tools may interfere with the JIRA upgrade 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 upgrade.
5. Check for any known issues in the JIRA Knowledge Base.
6. If you have installed any additional JIRA plugins (i.e. not included with JIRA), please verify that they will be compatible with the version of JIRA you are upgrading to. You can find a plugin's compatibility information from the the plugin's home page on the Atlassian Plugin Exchange. Once you have confirmed the availability of compatible versions, you should upgrade your plugins after successfully upgrading JIRA. This can be done via the 'Plugin Repository' in your Administration Console.
7. Test first!— We strongly recommend performing your upgrade in a test environment first. Do not upgrade your production JIRA server until you are satisfied that your test environment upgrade has been successful.
   • If you have any problems with your test environment upgrade which you cannot resolve, create an issue at our support site so that we can assist you.
   • If you have any problems during the upgrade of your production JIRA server, do not allow your users to start using this server. Instead:
     • Continue to use your old JIRA server — this will help ensure that you do not lose production data.
     • Also create an issue at our support site so that we can help you resolve the problems with production JIRA upgrade.

2. Backing Up

Before you begin the JIRA upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your existing JIRA installation because you cannot roll back a JIRA upgrade (after step 3.3).

2.1 Back up your database

Perform a backup of your external database (using your database's native backup tools) and verify that the backup was created correctly.

• If your database's native backup tools support 'online backups' (i.e. which would typically create a 'snapshot' of your JIRA database while the database is still in use), you can leave JIRA running while you perform the database backup.
• If your database's native backup tools do not allow you to perform an 'online backup' of your JIRA database, you should:
  • Prevent users from updating your existing JIRA data (to ensure structural consistency of your database backup) by temporarily restricting access to JIRA. Refer to the
    Preventing users from accessing JIRA during backups page for more information. (To access this page in the documentation for another version of JIRA, click the documentation link for your version of JIRA at the top of the left Table of Contents column and use the search box below to find this page.)
  • Use your database's native backup tools to perform an 'offline backup' of your JIRA database and verify that this backup was created correctly.
• JIRA's 'internal' database is HSQLDB, which should be used for evaluating JIRA only. If you happen to accidentally use the HSQLDB database for a production system, use the Migrating JIRA to Another Server procedure to upgrade JIRA instead of this one.

Inconsistent database backups may not restore correctly! If you are unfamiliar with your database's native backup/restore facilities, then before proceeding, test your database backup's integrity by:

• restoring the database backup to a different (test) system and
• connecting a test instance of your current JIRA version to this restored database.

Alternatively, use the Migrating JIRA to Another Server procedure to upgrade JIRA instead.

2.2 Back up your JIRA Home directory

Ensure JIRA is shut down before continuing.

The location of this directory is defined within the jira-application.properties configuration file, which is located inside the <jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/classes directory within your JIRA Installation Directory.

2.3 Back up your attachments directory if located outside your JIRA Home directory

Your attachments directory may be located outside your JIRA Home Directory. If so, it will also need to be backed up. To confirm the location of your attachments directory, refer to Configuring File Attachments page in the documentation for your version of JIRA. (To do this, click the documentation link for your version of JIRA at the top of the left Table of Contents column and use the search box below to find the 'Configuring File Attachments' page.)

2.4 Back up your JIRA Installation directory

The 'JIRA Installation Directory' is the directory into which the JIRA application files and libraries were extracted when JIRA was installed.

3. Performing the Upgrade

3.1 Install the new version of JIRA

First, you must start with a fresh installation of your new JIRA version.

Download and extract the JIRA distribution you require, to a new directory. Do not overwrite your existing JIRA installation. Simply shut this down and install the new JIRA version to a new location.

Follow the installation instructions for either:

• Installing JIRA (recommended), or
• Installing JIRA WAR

If you are using JIRA WAR, remember to build your new JIRA web application and deploy it to your server. For specific instructions, read the relevant guide (specific to your application server) within the Installing JIRA WAR section.

3.2 Migrate your existing JIRA configurations over to your new JIRA installation

You may have modified a number of properties within configuration files of your existing JIRA installation.

If so, you need to make the same modifications in your new JIRA installation. However, do not simply copy configuration files from your existing JIRA installation and replace the equivalent files in your new JIRA installation, since the properties in these files may have changed from the old version.

For each file you have modified in your existing JIRA installation, you need to manually edit each equivalent file in your new JIRA installation and re-apply your modifications. If a file is not present in your new JIRA installation (for example, osuser.xml in recent JIRA versions), then simply copy that file over to your new JIRA installation.

The table below lists the most commonly modified files and their locations within your JIRA Installation Directory:

The version-specific upgrade notes contain details on properties which may have changed in these commonly modified files.

In addition to the files above, you should also consider and/or perform the following configurations as part of the upgrade process:

• Using JIRA with Atlassian's Crowd? — If you are using Crowd with JIRA, configure your new JIRA to talk to Crowd as described in Integrating Crowd with JIRA.
• Allocating additional memory to JIRA — If you had previously allocated additional memory to JIRA, do the same for your new JIRA instance. For more information refer to Increasing JIRA memory.
• Plugins— For any plugins that you had installed in your old JIRA:
  1. Download the plugin version for your new version of JIRA from the http://plugins.atlassian.com site.
  2. Install the JAR file(s) in your new JIRA, and carry out any other required installation for the plugin.
  3. If the plugin has a properties file, apply the same changes to it as you had in the old properties file (don't just copy over the old properties file).
• Character encoding — Please ensure that character encoding (ie. locale) is the same on the new and old locations. You may have problems with encoding of the file names, if attachments are moved between two system with incompatible encoding.
  Your new version of JIRA may not function correctly or could encounter problems or errors if these are not implemented.
• Customisations — If you had made any customisations (code, templates or configuration files), copy over compatible versions of these changes to the new JIRA. (The developers within your organisation who made the customisations to your old version will need to build and test equivalent changes for the new version, and provide you with the files to copy to your upgraded JIRA installation).
• (Optional) Disabling Email Access — If you need to perform some initial tests on your new JIRA installation, you can disable its email access to prevent unintended emails being sent during testing. Be sure to re-enable email access once any testing is complete.
• (Optional) Running JIRA on a different port — If your new JIRA is installed on the same machine as your old JIRA, you may wish to make sure it runs on a different port (in case you ever need to restart your old JIRA). See Changing JIRA's TCP Ports for details.

3.3 Point your new JIRA to your existing JIRA Home directory

If your new JIRA 5.0.x installation is a 'recommended' (not WAR) distribution, you can:

1. Open the JIRA Configuration Tool.
2. Click the 'JIRA Home' tab.
3. Update the 'JIRA Home Directory' field to the path of your existing JIRA Home Directory, which you backed up (above).
   For more information about this directory, see JIRA Home Directory.

Otherwise:

1. Edit the jira-application.properties file located within the <jira-application-dir>/WEB-INF/classes subdirectory of your new JIRA 5.0.x Installation Directory JIRA Installation Directory.
2. Update the jira.home property in this file to the path of your existing JIRA Home Directory, which you backed up (above).
   For more information about this directory, see JIRA Home Directory.
3. Remove the '#' at the beginning of this line (so that JIRA no longer regards this line as a comment).
4. Save your updated jira-application.properties file.

You can also set your JIRA Home Directory's location by defining an operating system environment variable JIRA_HOME. This value of this variable takes precendence over the value of the jira.home property in the jira-application.properties file in your JIRA Installation Directory. See Setting your JIRA Home Directory for details.

3.4 Connect your new JIRA to your existing database

Now you need to configure your new JIRA installation to connect to and use your existing database, which was backed up (above).

Once you have performed this step and start your new JIRA server (in step 3.5 below), your JIRA database will be upgraded and it will no longer be compatible with earlier versions of JIRA.

Configure your new JIRA installation to use your existing database. For details refer to the appropriate instructions for your database:

• Configuring JIRA with PostgreSQL
• Configuring JIRA with MySQL
• Configuring JIRA with Oracle
• Configuring JIRA with SQL Server 2005
• Configuring JIRA with SQL Server 2008
• Configuring JIRA with HSQLDB
  The HSQL database is supported for evaluation purposes only.

If your new JIRA 5.0.x installation is a JIRA WAR distribution and its using a new application server installation, then ensure your database's JDBC driver has been copied across to your new application server. For details, refer to the appropriate instructions:

• Copying the PostgreSQL JDBC Driver
• Copying the MySQL JDBC Driver
• Copying the Oracle JDBC Driver
• Copying the SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver
• Copying the SQL Server 2008 JDBC Driver
• Copying the HSQLDB JDBC Driver
  The HSQL database is supported for evaluation purposes only.

3.5 Start your new version of JIRA

1. Verify that your old JIRA installation is shut down — if this JIRA server is still operating, shut it down.
2. If you installed the JIRA WAR distribution within Tomcat, delete the Tomcat work directory before restarting JIRA. If you do not do this, users may encounter errors when they try to display JIRA pages.
3. Start up your new version of JIRA. For:
   • 'Recommended' distributions — follow the Starting JIRA instructions.
   • WAR distributions — follow the instructions for starting JIRA for your application server within the Installing JIRA WAR section.
     During the startup process, your new JIRA installation will create any required database indexes.
4. Visit JIRA in your web browser and log in using a username from your previous JIRA installation. You should be able to log in immediately, without seeing the Setup Wizard.
5. Take a quick look around your JIRA site to confirm that your projects and issues are present and everything looks normal. You should see the new JIRA version number in the page footer.

4. Post Upgrade Checks and Tasks

Congratulations! You have completed your JIRA upgrade.

See Also

Disabling Auto-Export