How can system plug-ins / add ons / apps be disabled?

[rgordon-sg]

Running Jira Server 7.1.4 (very old, I know).

Through the Add-on manager UI within Jira, I disabled several user-installed apps that we were no longer using. I also updated the Universal Plugin Manager from within the UI to version 3.0.3.

After all that, many of the gadgets in Jira stopped working. I eventually figured out the source of the problem. Several "system" apps were disabled, things like the Gadget Dashboard Plugin. Enabling all the disabled "system" apps resolved the issue.

My question is, how did all those "system" apps get disabled in the first place? Does disabling user-installed apps automatically disable system apps? Does updating the Universal Plugin Manager somehow disable system apps?

[Earl McCutcheon]

HI Rob,

A possibility here is that a a dependency of a bundled plugin was disabled with one of the add-ons, and when you updated the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) a conflict occurred when reloading the plugin directory.  When you upgrade the UPM it will trigger a flush and restart to the plugin directory caching and attempt to reload the installed and bundled plugins, and if a dependency of a system plugin incorrectly got flagged as disabled it could cause a startup failure for that system plugin.

I would recomend checking the atlassian-jira.log, for any explicit errors that could narrow it down a bit and also check the DB as described in the following KB to see if there are any additional disabled bundled plugins: 

• https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/jira-application-does-not-start-due-to-disabled-bundled-plugin-254738702.html

Regards,
Earl