This page last changed on Jun 15, 2009 by rosie@atlassian.com.

This section describes how to install JIRA on Tomcat 5.0.x, a popular open-source server from the Apache Jakarta project.

These instructions have been tested with Tomcat 5.0.16, 5.0.19, 5.0.27 and 5.0.28, and are expected to work with all 5.0 versions.

Tomcat can be downloaded the Apache site.

Warning
Tomcat 5.0.x caches JSP results, which can result in memory leaks. We recommend using Tomcat 5.5.15+ to avoid this problem.

On this page:


1. Unpack JIRA

Download and unzip JIRA (but not with XP's unzipper nor the default tar utility on Solaris). Ensure that you download the WAR/EAR version, not the Standalone version that is recommended on the Downloads page.

Avoid the Windows XP built-in unzip tool! The built-in unzip tool in Windows XP is broken — it silently fails to extract files with long names (see JRA-2153 ). Other users have also reported problems using WinRAR. Please use another tool like WinZIP to unpack JIRA.
Avoid the Solaris default tar utility! On Solaris, please use GNU tar to unpack JIRA in order to handle long filenames. Do not use the Solaris default tar utility.

A new directory containing JIRA will be created, hereafter referred to as $JIRA_INSTALL.

If you are using Linux/UNIX: A dedicated user should be created to run JIRA, as JIRA runs as the user it is invoked under and therefore can potentially be abused. Here is an example of how to create a dedicated user to run JIRA in Linux:
$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd --create-home --home-dir /usr/local/jira --shell /bin/bash jira

2. Configure JIRA

2.1 Configure the database connection

JIRA needs to be told what type of database you'll be using. The database is specified in $JIRA_INSTALL/edit-webapp/WEB-INF/classes/entityengine.xml . Locate the <datasource> tag near the bottom, and change the field-type-name attribute value:

          <datasource name="defaultDS"
          helper-class="org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericHelperDAO"
          field-type-name="hsql"
          check-on-start="true"
          use-foreign-keys="false"
          use-foreign-key-indices="false"
          check-fks-on-start="false"
          check-fk-indices-on-start="false"
          add-missing-on-start="true">
          <jndi-jdbc jndi-server-name="default"
          jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS" />
        </datasource>

Possible values include cloudscape, db2, firebird, hsql, mckoidb, mysql, mssql, oracle, postgres, postgres72, sapdb, and sybase

For PostgreSQL 7.3+ and DB2 you also need to set a schema-name attribute (see the PostgreSQL and DB2 pages).

More details on JIRA's database access layer are available on the EntityEngine configuration page.

2.2. Set JIRA Home

To specify the location of your JIRA Home Directory (note that you need to do this before you build JIRA):

You can specify any location on a disk for your JIRA home directory. Please be sure to specify an absolute path.

Please note that you cannot use the same JIRA home directory for multiple instances of JIRA. We recommend that you do not specify your JIRA home directory inside your installation directory, to prevent information from being accidentally lost during major operations (e.g. backing up and restoring instances).


3. Build JIRA

Now build JIRA by typing build (Windows) or ./build.sh (Unix) on the command line in the $JIRA_INSTALL directory. This will produce the deployable WAR file in the $JIRA_INSTALL/dist-tomcat directory.

Warning
If you want to copy the WAR file somewhere else, be sure to customise the path to it in jira.xml below. Do not copy this WAR file to Tomcat's webapps/ (or server/webapps/ ) directory, as it would be auto-deployed there in an unconfigured state.

4. Update Tomcat Libraries

Tomcat does not come with some libraries required to run JIRA. To fix this, download jira-jars-tomcat5.zip (1.2Mb), and copy the contained jars to Tomcat's common/lib/ directory.

5. Configure Tomcat

A JIRA 'context' now needs to be set up in Tomcat. To do this:

  1. Copy dist-tomcat/tomcat-5/jira.xml from the built JIRA distribution to your Tomcat's conf/Catalina/localhost/ directory.
  2. Customise the copied jira.xml as follows:
    <Context path="/jira" docBase="path/to/atlassian-jira-3.13.war" debug="0">
      <Logger className="org.apache.catalina.logger.FileLogger"
              prefix="atlassian-jira." suffix=".log" timestamp="true"/>
      <Resource name="jdbc/JiraDS" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"/>
      <ResourceParams name="jdbc/JiraDS">
        <parameter>
          <name>driverClassName</name>
          <value>org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver</value>
        </parameter>
        <parameter>
          <name>url</name>
          <value>jdbc:hsqldb:path/to/jira_database</value>
        </parameter>
        <parameter>
          <name>username</name>
          <value>sa</value>
        </parameter>
        <parameter>
          <name>password</name>
          <value></value>
        </parameter>
    
        <!-- NOTE: If NOT using hsqldb, delete the next two parameters -->
        <!-- Give unused connections 4 secs before eviction. -->
        <parameter>
          <name>minEvictableIdleTimeMillis</name>
          <value>4000</value>
        </parameter>
        <!-- Check for evictions every 5 secs. -->
        <parameter>
          <name>timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis</name>
          <value>5000</value>
        </parameter>
        <parameter>
          <name>factory</name>
          <value>org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory</value>
        </parameter>
      </ResourceParams>
    
      <Resource name="UserTransaction" auth="Container" type="javax.transaction.UserTransaction"/>
      <ResourceParams name="UserTransaction">
        <parameter>
          <name>factory</name>
          <value>org.objectweb.jotm.UserTransactionFactory</value>
        </parameter>
        <parameter>
          <name>jotm.timeout</name>
          <value>60</value>
        </parameter>
      </ResourceParams>
    </Context>
    
    The paths (denoted as path/to/) will be correct by default, assuming you want to deploy the .war from the dist-tomcat/ directory.
Note
If you are not using hsqldb, make sure you comment out the minEvictableIdleTimeMillis and timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis params, or JIRA will run slower than normal.

If you are installing in Windows, make sure that the paths you specify for the location of the WAR file and database are full paths with drive letters (e.g. c:\yourdb\tomcatdb). N.B. the last part of the path is the name of the database and is not a directory.

5.1 Configure the database connection

The example context shown above uses the HSQL in-memory database. To use a different database, copy its JDBC driver jar to common/lib/, and change the context XML appropriately (see the database doc).

5.2 Modify Tomcat server.xml

In order for JIRA to correctly display internationalized characters in user and group names you need to modify your Tomcat distributions conf/server.xml file. You need to set the property useBodyEncodingForURI="true" within the connector definition for your http protocol. The connector block should look very much like this:

<Connector port="8080"
    maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
    enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100"
    debug="0" connectionTimeout="20000"
    disableUploadTimeout="true"/>

You should modify the block to contain the addition of the useBodyEncodingForURI property:

<Connector port="8080"
    maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
    enableLookups="false" redirectPort="8443" acceptCount="100"
    debug="0" connectionTimeout="20000"
    disableUploadTimeout="true" useBodyEncodingForURI="true"/&gt;
Note
Because you must define this property in at the connector level, this setting will affect all web-applications you have deployed under the connector. This should not adversely effect the other web-applications but please be aware of this. JIRA will run fine without this property set but you will run into issues if a user or group is created which contains international characters. It is best to set this property to true.

5.3 Fix Tomcat memory settings

Tomcat has a memory leak where large JSP page requests can fill up memory. To avoid this, edit Tomcat's bin/setenv.sh (create it if it does not exist) and set:

export CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -Dorg.apache.jasper.runtime.BodyContentImpl.LIMIT_BUFFER=true"

or when installed as a Windows service, run:

tomcat5 //US//JIRA ++JvmOptions="-Dorg.apache.jasper.runtime.BodyContentImpl.LIMIT_BUFFER=true

For other environments, and for more info on memory settings, see the memory settings page.


6. Set mail.mime.decodeparameters

The following system property must be set in order for the JIRA mail handler to work correctly with emails from RFC 2231-compliant mail clients:

mail.mime.decodeparameters=true

System properties are set in different ways depending on your application server.

7. Start Tomcat

JIRA should now be ready to run in Tomcat. To start using JIRA, first start (or restart) the Tomcat server with Tomcat's bin/startup.(sh|bat) scripts, and point your browser to http://localhost:8080/jira

You should now see the Setup Wizard, which will take you through the brief setup procedure.


Troubleshooting

It is easy to make a mistake in this process, and even more so if you are trying to connect to a database other than hsqldb. First, check that you have followed the process described above:

  • If you are using an external database (not hsqldb), have you set the field-type-name attribute in $JIRA_INSTALL/edit-webapp/WEB-INF/classes/entityengine.xml? (step 1)
  • Have you previously started JIRA with an incorrect field-type-name value? If so, the database schema would have been created incorrectly.
  • If you have made changes to $JIRA_INSTALL/edit-webapp/WEB-INF/classes/entityengine.xml (step 2) and re-run the build script (step 3), but your changes are not being picked up, delete the Tomcat webapps/jira directory, then restart JIRA. It would seem that in some circumstances Tomcat does not correctly re-expand the web application.
  • Have you copied the extra Tomcat jars (step 4)? Check if you have common/lib/objectweb-datasource-1.4.3.jar present.
  • If using an external database, did you copy the JDBC driver jar to common/lib/ (step 5)?
  • Is the path to the .war file in conf/Catalina/localhost/jira.xml correct?
  • Have you copied the .war file to Tomcat's webapps/ directory? This is almost guaranteed to cause pain — please move it elsewhere, and delete any JIRA subdirectories created in webapps/ from previous Tomcat starts.
  • Have you configured JIRA centrally in conf/server.xml instead of in conf/Catalina/localhost/jira.xml ? This is fine, but then be sure you don't also have a conf/Catalina/localhost/jira.xml present.
  • The log files are usually vital to debugging problems. On Windows, these will appear in the console window that loads when running startup.bat , or in one of the log files in the logs/ directory. On Linux/Unix, logs will appear in a log file in logs/ , usually logs/catalina.out . Check the log file for errors after startup.

If you're stuck, please raise a support request, and attach your logs, configuration files, plus anything else relevant, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. If you have a general question, please try the jira-user mailing list.

User-contributed notes

Have experiences to share with Tomcat 5.0 and JIRA? We welcome your thoughts. Please see the user-contributed Tomcat 5.0.x notes.

Document generated by Confluence on Oct 06, 2009 00:31