JIRA COULDN'T CREATE THE JIRA.HOME DIRECTORY

[Deleted user]

We have installed JIRA Software Data Center v7.12.1 on Windows Server 2012 in D:/ drive. We have made E:/ drive as shared network. We have copied jira installation and home directories to second node. But on second node, we are getting following errors.

Setup: JIRA couldn't create the jira.home directory

Ensure JIRA has permission to create and write to the jira.home directory E:

Jira home directory is set up in jira-application.properties file. 

[Jeff Turner]

Here's another possible cause of 'JIRA couldn't create the jira.home directory' startup errors: Jira is unable to write to a subdirectory of Jira home directory.

For example, if the $JIRAHOME/export/ directory is only writable as root, you'll get the error.

Here you can see Atlassian's halfassed JiraHomeAppender code: it gets a failure object saying exactly what is wrong, but all it does it print a (wrong) message in debug mode (so appearing nowhere), and then returns "atlassian-jira.log" instead of an absolute path:

As a result Jira tries to write to 'atlassian-jira.log' in whatever working directory the caller happened to be.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is exactly what is says on the tin.  The Jira user (the windows user the Jira service is running as) does not have full read, write, execute delete rights to the home directory you have defined.

However, your question is a little unclear.  You say "copied home directories to second node", but have you set it up correctly?  You should have three directories for "home", as defined in four places, like

• Node1:  Local drive c:\data\jira-home\
• Node1:  Shared drive d:\data\jira-shared-home
• Node2:  Local drive c:\data\jira-home\
• Node2:  Shared drive d:\data\jira-shared-home

(Names of directories are simplified, you can use anything that suits your layout)

Is that what you have done?

[Deleted user]

Hi Nic, Thanks for your reply.

We have checked/granted full rights to jira user who is running the jira windows service, Still we are getting the same error "Ensure JIRA has permission to create and write to the jira.home directory E:.". We have set up installation and home in D:\ drive and shared home exists on E:\ drive.
But from the error, it seems, it is trying to get create/write permission on jira.home directory in E:\ drive. But we have set up jira.home in D: drive as mentioned above.

Please help.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Data Centre installs are a bit more complex than the Server systems they evolved from.

Ignoring the DC stuff for a second - Jira needs a home directory to keep things in.  We all refer to this as the "jira home".  On server, this directory contains a load of directories and files Jira works with.  Caches, attachments, working directories, plugin definitions, logs, the index and so-on.

When you move to DC, the home directory needs to be partially shared.  There are some things in it that belong to the local node, and others that need to be shared.

So, you need a home directory on a disk that is local on each node, and a second home directory that is shared across the nodes.

The Jira user on each node needs full access to both its local home directory and the shared one.

The error is very clear - your second node does not have the access to E: that it needs.  

[Aditi Jain]

Actually we tried all the possibilities, we are stuck at the below scenario now:

1. On updating the Cluster properties file with the details as in snapshot
2. On starting Jira services, new folder is getting created itself with all the subfolders
3. Check how the file path is getting created at application level. Also, "jirasharedhomejirahome" is coming as one folder, instead of subfolders.

Please help to review the snapshot once, and advise on any step we are missing out here. Appreciate your inputs. Thanks

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You need to escape the \ characters on windows machines, the OS is terrible at naming things properly.