Issues when performing Jira Service Desk Restore

[Ian Bardecki]

Hi - We have been having consistent issues when building our on-prem Jira Service Desk server, and performing a backup restore.

We have tried several days worth of instances of the Jira performed backup, as well as a manual backup, and continue to run into the same issues.

A little history: We had inadvertantly installed SQL Server 2017 Enterprise. Se we needed to uninstall, and install the Standard version. Upon completion of the SQL installation, we performed the creation of the DB to be used, and then started Jira to then restore the backup data.

All seemed to work - until the sidebar wouldn't load. We then had to enable the Dark Feature: com.atlassian.jira.config.BIG_PIPE_KILLSWITCH. 

Then we noticed that some site features were missing, and we were unable to access or configure anything under Request Types. Doing so gives us the error: "jira Snap! You can't view this page You need to be a Service Desk Agent to access this page. Contact your administrator if you need access."

All of the Administrators are a part of the jira-administrators group. They are also a part of the jira-servicedesk-users group. Removing them from jira-servicedesk-users, restarting Jira and leaving them only in jira-administrators, did not resolve the issue.

We're wondering if there's anything else to do, rather than do a complete uninstall and re-install, starting from scratch - again.

Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks!

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Ian,

Sorry to hear there are restore problems here.  However I think I know what is happening here.  

It sounds like you are encountering the same problem described in the KB After upgrading to JIRA Service Desk 3.2.x or greater, Service Desk project's navigation bar shows "Unable to render element due to an error"

In that KB it explains a scenario where trying to upgrade Jira from an older 2.5.x or earlier version directly to a 3.2.x or higher version will break service desk.  This was a known problem where Service Desk implemented its very first upgrade requirement version.  This mandates that in order to upgrade that old service desk data, you would first have to upgrade Jira to a version between 7.0.0 -> 7.1.10.   Also, when on that version of Jira, you then need to install a compatible Service Desk version such as 3.0.0 -> 3.1.10.  This is the only way to upgrade that existing Service Desk data.   Once that upgrade is complete, you can then upgrade to the latest versions of Jira and Service Desk.

Could you confirm what version of Jira and Jira Service Desk this backup was created on?   If we can learn that, and also know what version of Jira you are trying to restore this to, it will help us to better understand if this is the problem I think it is.   Additionally we could take a look into the startup logs in $JIRAHOME/log/atlassian-jira.log to see if these logs have noted that Service Desk cannot be upgraded in this newer version.

Please let me know this info, and if you have any questions about the next steps here.

Cheers,

Andy