Did support for Apache AJP/1.3 proxy support get dropped with version 8.11.0 of Jira ?

[Theodore Knab]

It appears the Apache AJP/1.3 proxy stops working with the 8.11.0 Jira Software upgrade on Centos7. Anyone else have this issue ? 

I ran the following upgrades successfully prior to 8.11.0.

* Jira updates 8.8.1 to 8.10.0 - no issues

* Jira upgrade 8.10.0 to 8.10.1 - no issues

* Jira upgrade from 8.10.1 or 8.10.0 to 8.11.0 - Proxy dies. 

Here was the Apache error I saw: 

[Fri Aug 28 08:40:21.976570 2020] [proxy_ajp:error] [pid 124553:tid 140387455579904] [client 10.128.144.8:59481] AH00896: failed to make connection to backend: localhost, referer: https://jira-dev.example.net/secure/Dashboard.jspa
[Fri Aug 28 08:52:21.639798 2020] [proxy:error] [pid 124553:tid 140387455579904] (111)Connection refused: AH00957: AJP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:8009 (localhost) failed

Jira still works on port 8080, but the AJP proxy just died.

As a work around, I had to switch to a different proxy to get Apache to work with Jira.

Here is how I did that if anyone is interested.

https://github.com/zeekus/textfiles/blob/master/jira_proxy_change.md

[Daniel Eads · Accepted solution]

Hi Theodore, thanks for sharing the steps you took to switch proxy connectors!

While 8.11.0 contains a patched version of Tomcat (the underlying Java application server), versions of Jira prior to that relied on Tomcat versions that were affected by CVE-2020-1938 (known as "ghostcat") that could affect AJP connections. For those versions of Jira, we recommended avoiding AJP connections to mitigate the CVE.

Moreover, we've mostly seen that the NIO connector provides the same or better performance than the AJP connector, and can be more flexible as you can swap out Apache for nginx or another proxy if you wish.

Thanks for the post, as I'm sure the discussion will help others who may be thinking about changing connectors.

Cheers,
Daniel