Jira install fails at importing XML: "You must enter the location of an XML file."

Question

Hi all.

I'm testing the setup of Jira on Linux, and things are up and running, to the point where I'm ready to import the database-content from a XML-backup. (This is a case of trying to migrate Jira from Windows Server 2012 to Linux.)

OS: CentOS 7
Jira: 7.13.8
DB: Oracle 12.2

The atlassian-jira.log contains...

2020-08-07 13:02:43,202 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 782x73x1 - 159.162.97.153 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImport Service] Importing data is 18% complete...
2020-08-07 13:02:44,106 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 782x73x1 - 159.162.97.153 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImport Service] Importing data is 19% complete...
2020-08-07 13:02:44,866 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 782x73x1 - 159.162.97.153 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImport Service] Importing data is 20% complete...

...and then it just stops. I have found one thread here in the Community, but it was caused by a limitation in MySQL that has both been fixed, and doesn't (to my knowledge) affect Oracle 12.2. That was a problem with MySQL not supporting emojis.

Where can I find more info about that has gone wrong?

Joey Ancheta_0ueqo7 · Answer

I increased the Java application memory to minimum 1g and maximum 4g.

jira 2144 76.3 6.4 7201276 2103812 ? Sl 11:36 1:27 /data/atlassian/jira/jre//bin/java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/data/atlassian/jira/conf/logging.properties -Djava.util.logging.manager=org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager -Xms1g -Xmx4g -Djava.awt.headless=true -Datlassian.standalone=JIRA -Dorg.apache.jasper.runtime.BodyContentImpl.LIMIT_BUFFER=true -Dmail.mime.decodeparameters=true -Dorg.dom4j.factory=com.atlassian.core.xml.InterningDocumentFactory -XX:-OmitStackTraceInFastThrow -Datlassian.plugins.startup.options= -Djdk.tls.ephemeralDHKeySize=2048 -Djava.protocol.handler.pkgs=org.apache.catalina.webresources -Xloggc:/data/atlassian/jira/logs/atlassian-jira-gc-%t.log -XX:+UseGCLogFileRotation -XX:NumberOfGCLogFiles=5 -XX:GCLogFileSize=20M -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintGCCause -classpath /data/atlassian/jira/bin/bootstrap.jar:/data/atlassian/jira/bin/tomcat-juli.jar -Dcatalina.base=/data/atlassian/jira -Dcatalina.home=/data/atlassian/jira -Djava.io.tmpdir=/data/atlassian/jira/temp org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start

Joey Ancheta_0ueqo7 · Answer

I'm experiencing the same thing! I've actually used this same XML file on a different server and it worked great. All I'm trying to do is test and document the process of migrating Jira from one server to a next (for future OS updates and VM decommissioning). And now the same exact process I did once before no longer works. I have a VM with 32G of memory, the same as the other "working" test environment.

2022-06-20 11:16:24,154 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Running JIRA Data Import...
2022-06-20 11:16:24,449 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing XML data...
2022-06-20 11:16:25,529 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 1% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:26,350 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 2% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:27,146 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 3% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:27,811 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 4% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:28,543 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 5% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:29,172 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 6% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:29,750 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 7% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:30,308 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 8% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:30,905 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 9% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:31,517 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 10% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:32,132 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 11% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:32,765 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 12% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:33,379 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 13% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:34,005 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 14% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:34,749 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 15% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:35,412 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 16% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:36,120 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 17% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:36,775 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 18% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:37,517 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 19% complete...
2022-06-20 11:16:38,188 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 INFO anonymous 676x11x1 - 10.20.252.16 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Importing data is 20% complete...

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi,

Sorry to hear about this problem with importing an xml backup into Jira.  Unfortunately, this information is not enough for us to understand why this is happening just yet.

I would also be interested to see if we can take a closer look at the $JIRAINSTALL/logs/catalina.out file.  This is another log location that provided by the Tomcat container that Jira runs in.  It has a slightly different formatting, but can sometimes contain more information that the atlassian-jira.log file found in the home folder.

I would also be interested to see if we can confirm the specific version of the jdbc driver that is in use here.  I know you mentioned this is an Oracle 12c R2 database here, as I recall there were a few problems with using older versions of that driver.  I'd recommend using the one we reference in the supported platforms page.

If the logs don't have any entries after that time and we have waited a considerable amount of time, then we'd probably want to take a series of thread dumps of Jira in order to try to better understand why the application is hanging like this.

Yes, SQL exceptions can cause these kinds of problems, but I would expect that we would see details of the exception in one of these two logs if that is the case.  Otherwise we might be dealing with a different problem, such as Jira exceeding the heap of the JVM.  I would be interested to see if we can understand what the -Xmx parameter is set to for your Jira install?  Steps to increase this are in Increasing Jira application memory, depending on how Jira starts, the steps can be different for setting this.

Please let me know.

Andy