Starting JIRA automatically stops Confluence, vice versa

[Hong Zheng]

I recently migrated JIRA 6.4 and Confluence 5.7 to a new Ubuntu server. I noticed starting one server automatically stops the other. Has anyone else come across this problem or know what the problem might be?

Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

If you have shared any resources between the two, then yes, this can happen.

Starting one can make the other run out of memory if you've allowed too much memory to them, their databases will lock if you try to share, the home directories, any part of their Tomcat installations and so-on.

Best bet is to read the log.  Bring them both up, and then read the application log for the one that stops, and, probably more usefully, the catalina.out file for both Tomcats.

[Hong Zheng]

Found this in Confluence catalina.out

Error occurred during initialization of VM

Could not reserve enough space for object heap

Both Xms and Xmx were set to 1024m in setenv.sh. The default values for JIRA seem more reasonable to me. Not sure why Confluence team did that.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Both applications can be quite memory hungry as they grow, and it often makes sense to start java systems with Xms = Xmx.  (I'm not going to pretend I understand it, or when it's a good idea, but I'm told it's appropriate here)

[Jan-Peter Rusch]

Atlassian doesn't support & recommend running multiple Atlassian products on a single machine. Your solution might work, but think about separating Confluence & JIRA or at least run them in different virtual machines.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Actually, they do.  What they do not support is running multiple products on the same application server.  In theory, it's possible to run one Tomcat with JIRA and Confluence and others all running inside it.  That is not supported.

But running one Tomcat per application is supported, even if those Tomcats are all on the same server.  You must be careful to ensure the server is capable of handling the load though.

[GabrielleJ]

Also, try checking the ports being used in your start/stop scripts. The shutdown port being used by the other is being used by a starting port by the other.