How to Upgrade Jira on Windows & Linux Server

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Geek Culture

5 min readAug 4, 2022

Getting started with Atlassian Applications | Jira | Linux Server

So let’s start with a quick review of things, Atlassian is a software company that developed multiple tools and products that are widely used within the IT industry. Some of their popular products that are used by IT Teams/organizations are:

Jira → Used for project management and issue tracking.
Bitbucket → Source Code management using Git version control.
Confluence → Used for documentation
Bamboo → a CI/CD tool, well integrated with Bitbucket
OpsGenie → an incident alerting tool for IT Operation Teams
Trello → a collaboration tool
Crowd → a single sign-on and identity management tool

For more info, check out their Software productions, they have some good stuff going on.

So in this article, I’m going the share the steps by steps on how to upgrade the Jira application whether you’re running your instance on Windows or Linux Server.

Assumptions & Recommendations

In most organizations, these tools are maintained by the IT Operation Team whether it’s the Infrastructure, DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering Team.

It’s important to upgrade Jira to its latest LTS version to get the latest security patches and newer features. Based on Atlassian's new version release frequency and for proper Life Cycle management these Atlassian applications. I’d recommend upgrading Jira Quarterly or ( 4 times a year)
For the purpose of this article, I’m going to assume that you’re familiar with these applications' installation, setup, and configs.

Jira Upgrade on Linux Server

Steps to prep for the upgrade

Download the LTS version of JIRA you are upgrading to: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/download-archives

Move the Linux installer file to your home directory on the server:

scp ./atlassian-jira-software-X.X.X-x64.bin root@yourServer:/home/xx

Move the file from your home directory to the Atlassian installation folder → run the following command to check the Jira installation folder (the default Jira installation folder is: /opt/Atlassian/jira) →

# get jira installation folder
ps -ef | grep -i jira# move the new installer file to the jira installation folder
mv /home/yourHomeFolder/atlassian-jira-software-X.X.X-x64.bin /opt/Atlassian/

makes sure the file is executable, if not run the following command:

chmod +x /opt/atlassian/atlassian-jira-software-X.X.X-x64.bin

2. Verify all plugins are up to date

3. Vefiry Plugins are compatible with the version you’re upgrading.

Manage apps → under the list of plugins → go to Jira update Check
Run the “Plan Your Upgrade” as recommended by Atlassian to verify there are no errors moving forward with the version of Jira we are currently using.

4. Complete the Health Check to make sure there are no issues with the current license or database.

admin menu → System → Troubleshooting and support tools

More info related to this preparation can be found here: preparing for the upgrade. Once you have done all that, your app is ready to be upgraded.

Upgrade Implementation Steps

Take a Snapshot of the Linux VM server.
Take a full backup of the Jira Database.
Got to plugins management and update all the plugins that need to be updated → Most of the time updating plugins will require re-indexing, perform a re-indexing as needed

based on the update check recommendation you did on the prep, update the plugins that can be updated, and disable the others.
Jira admin menu → System → indexing → and do full re-indexing

The steps above is very important and should be performed correctly in case you need to restore things.
Note: Jira home directory and Jira installation directory are two different folders. makes sure that you have reviewed the content of those two folders

4. make a copy of the following current files:

# this is for your JVM settings and configs
setenv.sh → located here: /opt/atlassian/jira/bin/setenv.sh# this is a for your server configs 
server.xml → located here: /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/server.xml

Normally, during the installation, only the content of your Jira installation direction will be modified, not the content of your Jira Home directory. But better be safe then sorry, so just make a copy of these two files as well

# this is for your app Database configs
dbconfig.xml → located here: /yourJiraHomeDirectory/dbconfig.xmllimits.conf → located here: /etc/security/limits.conf

5. Stop Jira → service jira stop

7. make a copy of your current Jira, by running the following command:

cd /opt/atlassian/cp -Rp ./jira ./jira.old

Install the new Jira version

8. Run the new installer file → make sure that the file ownership is root:

# chnaging file ownership to root
chown root:root ./atlassian-jira-software-X.X.X-x64.bin# run the new installer
./atlassian-jira-software-X.X.X-x64.bin

follow through with the prompt, that looks something like this:

9. DO NOT Start Jira yet after successfully completing the installation

Verify config .xml files did not change after the upgrade if they did change revert back ( dbconfig.xml — limits.conf — setenv.sh — server.xml)

Then Start the Jira and wait for the dashboard to become available →service jira start

Troubleshooting

If you run into some errors, try troubleshooting before backing out. To check the logs while running into any issue:

tail -30f /opt/atlassian/jira/logs/catalina.out
review the *.xml files that might have changed
if you’re running into a plugins issue and Jira is not starting → start Jira with all the plugins disabled

/opt/atlassian/bin/start-jira.sh --disable-all-addons

and open the setenv.sh file and make sure you’re allocating the appropriate or recommended JVM memory relative to your RAM

Back out of the upgrade

If the Jira upgrade fails, all troubleshooting efforts are unsuccessful and you cannot get the newer version to run properly. You can restore the previous version that work as expected using the Jira folder copy we took on step 7.

Do the following:

stop Jira → service jira stop

cd /opt/Atlassian# rename the current new jira folder
mv ./jira ./jira.new# rename the older jira folder
mv /jira.old ./jira

start Jira → service jira start

If you still running into issues, simply restore your Linux server VM from its state before the upgrade from the snapshot you took in step 1, review things and give it a go again when you’re ready for another try. If all went well, you’ll get a page that looks like this:

If you’re running you Jira instance on a windows server, check out part II of how to upgrade Jira on a Windows server.

Cheers!!