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Running Jira on an ARM embedded system?

Hamid Elaosta1

Hi all,

I'm looking to run Jira at home for personal use and I'm wondering if it's possible to get a light weight setup for a couple of projects to run on a low resource embedded system.

I have an Arm plug computer with only 128MB of RAMand a 2TB SATA HDD that I use as a web server, subversion server etc and am trying to run Jira on it.

I have installed the latest embedded Java (Soft Float) and the Jira trial (standalone), I have gotten it running and gotten as far as setting up the database.

Setup has been on the database set up page (saying it may take a minute) for a couple of hours, I have been checking the Jira home dir and it has been growing slowly over the last couple of hours and has currently reach about 250MB.

I am wondering if there is some config options I can use to lower the requirements to run Jira, even if it means restricting usage by max connections, number of threads, DB size etc.

Jira will be run at home, only by myself, never more than one connection, my projects will be small and few.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Accepted answers

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

I very much doubt you are going to get very far with that. Jira is resource intensive, even at a single low usage installation. It might finish creating the database ok, and it might start up, but I can't get Jira to run in less than 256Mb RAM, and that's before I actually give it any data. Also note that that's what I allocate to Jira, not the system memory - you need even more to run the OS, and yet more if you've got it running anything else.

My "low usage" install runs on a system with 1Gb RAM installed and 768Mb allocated to the JVM. That's ok for a single user, but even then, it can drag sometimes.

I'm afraid it's not a case of restricting usage, I think you're going to need a bigger server.

All comments

Arthur Gonçalves

Hello Hamid,

The ARM architecture is currently unsupported by JIRA, which means that you can face many troubles trying to running the application. Additionally, as stated here, you'll need at least 300MB for the JVM heap size. So, my recommendation is to you avoid trying to run JIRA on this server, to avoid problems with performance and application crashes.

Cheers,

Arthur Gonçalves

LucasA

Hi Hamid,

I believe that this low performance is happening by a coupe reasons:

- You have 128MB Ram, shared with OS, database and Apache;
- You're running Java Soft Float;

I believe that the best thing in your case would be moving the database to another box, and check how it will goes. When Java start swapping, it ends up slowering the whole system, so if you could avoid that, JIRA will become usable (at least). I don't think that decreasing the database pools and threads could cause you some effect, but you would try to disable some embeded functions (such as mail plugins, log4j, embeded services, etc) to save some heap memory.

Hence, JIRA 5.2 will support JDK 1.7, that already has a recent ARM version. I'm not sure if it will run on your ARM Plug (ARM processors has many variants), but it will be a worth try.

By the way, congratulations for your idea. I never tried to do something like that.

Best regards,
Lucas Timm

Hamid Elaosta1

Thanks for the response. I got a 1GB swap file setup, which probably explains why it runs at all, but several hours just to create the database almost speaks for itself. Real shame because I was hoping for something light weight enough to run on this "always on" server. I'll have to run it on my development machine.

Hamid Elaosta1

Thank you. Do you know where I can disable these services if I havn't yet made it to the dashboard? It's been setting up the database for about 3 hours now and its at 279M. How much bigger will it get before it finishes? I'm wondering if I can move the database to a remote server (over the internet) and if that will help or make matters worse.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

My "low usage" install runs on a system with 1Gb RAM installed and 768Mb allocated to the JVM. That's ok for a single user, but even then, it can drag sometimes.

I'm afraid it's not a case of restricting usage, I think you're going to need a bigger server.

LucasA

Moving the database for another server into your local network would be the best option. However, if you don't have a big latency between your plug/the remote database via internet, it should work fine.

For disabling the plugins with no dashboard access, you'll need to change some things on the database -- and it will depend from plugin to plugin. Hence, JIRA needs to be "ready" before you doing that. So for now you'll need to wait until the installation finishes.

You can also set up JIRA on your computer, tune it disabling everything and, after that, take a database dump/copy the JIRA home and load everything on your ARM plug. You only need to set the jira-application.properties setting the jira.home variable and place a dbconfig.xml into it.

Best regards,
Lucas Timm

Hamid Elaosta1

Fair enough, it may be the case that I'll just have to run Jira on my dev machine which is significantly more capable. Always worth a try though

Felipe Cuozzo

Sorry for the unrelated answer but is there any reason for not trying/using our OnDemand JIRA offering to fullfil your needs?

For $10/month and you get an unlimited JIRA instance with automated upgrades and backups, free support and a globally accessible instance on the Internet. If you buy an annual subscription you get 2 months free.

Cheers,
Felipe Cuozzo
OnDemand Team

Hamid Elaosta1

Sure,

I'm just trialing at the moment, and since it would (were I happy with it) be used at home, it would not be economical for me to pay $10/month for something I may use once in a blue moon. The one off $10 payment was part of the appeal of considering it at all. It may sometimes take several months before I come back to a personal project, others even years, I'm sure you can understand the situation.

For the interest of anyone else concerned, I consider this problem solved, and in short, it's just not going to run on the low end server I was hoping to run it on. I will look elsewhere for solutions to managing my projects.

Thanks for the assistance everyone.

Felipe Cuozzo

Awesome, yeah if it's once in a blue moon the cost can be prohibitive, in that case have you tried using the Bitbucked free Issue/Wiki that is embedded on each repository? It's does not have feature parity with JIRA/Confluence but may be be a good alternative for the use case you're describing.

Good luck

Hamid Elaosta1

Thanks, I'll try that. I recently started using Bitbucket for my source control so I'll give that a look.

Zsolt Essig-Kac

So is this possible to run JIRA on ARM? I want to install it on a more powerfull board: http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141351880955 or http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138745696275

The requirements are Ok IMO, but is the architecture supported or is it possible to install it to this board?