Cannot export backlog. Getting a illegalArgument error

[Gustavo Gei]

When trying to select 240 issues from backlog and viewing in the navigator, and then wanting to export in excel, I am getting an error.

HTTP Status 400 – Bad Request

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Type Exception Report

Message Request header is too large

Description The server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (e.g., malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).

Exception

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Request header is too large
	org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11InputBuffer.fill(Http11InputBuffer.java:721)
	org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11InputBuffer.parseHeader(Http11InputBuffer.java:874)
	org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11InputBuffer.parseHeaders(Http11InputBuffer.java:564)
	org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service(Http11Processor.java:309)
	org.apache.coyote.AbstractProcessorLight.process(AbstractProcessorLight.java:66)
	org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$ConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:860)
	org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1587)
	org.apache.tomcat.util.net.SocketProcessorBase.run(SocketProcessorBase.java:49)
	java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
	java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
	org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
	java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

Note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the server logs.

[James Reader]

This is because JIRA sends the request to the server in the query parameters of a URL instead of via POST.  Because of this, the URL ends up being over the maximum size allowed by the server and the server responds with an error.  Solutions are to increase the maxHttpHeaderSize attribute in the conf/server.xml configuration, or splitting up your export into multiple pieces. I ran into the same problem exporting a filter criteria that was overly long (due to the lack of JQL visibility into linkedissues)