Restoring access to user database to export a backup for cloud migration

William Scott McKune

Our VM crashed and I am only able to recover the data from an image backup that was taken. I can't remap the databases for Jira, Confluence or any others. I tried to install a new instance of the program in order to restore or modify a config to point at the old databases. I have the entire contents of the application folders and the SQL databases from the old system but I don't see where to reattach or point to the databases in the new instance.

Andy Heinzer

Hi William,

I understand that you are trying to restore a Jira server instance from a backup, but appear to be unable to connect to the old database.  Jira server determines what database to connect to by looking into the $JIRAHOME/dbconfig.xml file.  There are a few different way for you to be able to update that file. 

My preferred method is to use the Jira config tool to manage this.  This utility helps update that file and other configuration files needed to setup Jira.

There is also a concern about version differences in Jira.  What version was the old version of Jira?  And what version did you install after the crash?  I only ask this because sometimes the version differences have been known to be too great to successfully complete an upgrade in this manner.

Another concern is to try to understand what database type and version of the database you are using here.  This is two fold: for one there is a concern about database compatibility between versions, and secondly some databases such as MySQL, Jira cannot connect to until you manually download and install the jdbc .jar file.  Due to licensing restrictions, Atlassian is not able to bundle that file with the installer. 

As a general guide for setting up Jira to connect to a database, I recommend Connecting Jira applications to a database.  It has lots of information and links to specific database type guides that are helpful here.

Try those resources and let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this.

Andy