Jira stopped rendering pages, only header appears

[Miguel Borges]

We have a jira installation on our system. This morning it stopped rendering the login page as it did. The only thing that is visible is this UI:

If we click the login button, we get this:

But when insisting on clicking the log in button, no action happens. 

We get these errors on catalina.out when refreshing the page, but I am not sure how to interpret them and if they are even related to when we can see:

2019-11-18 14:31:51,973 http-nio-8080-exec-11 ERROR anonymous 871x2045x2 1pryufm 10.10.33.202 /plugins/servlet/dependencymap/visualizer [o.a.c.c.C.[Catalina].[localhost].[/]] Unhandled exception occurred whilst decorating page
java.lang.NullPointerException
at se.findout.plugin.PluginServlet.getCurrentUserJson(PluginServlet.java:373)
at se.findout.plugin.PluginServlet.doGet(PluginServlet.java:115)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:622)
...
at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

2019-11-18 14:31:51,976 http-nio-8080-exec-11 ERROR [o.a.c.c.C.[.[localhost].[/].[servlet-module-container-servlet]] Servlet.service() for servlet [servlet-module-container-servlet] in context with path [] threw exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
at se.findout.plugin.PluginServlet.getCurrentUserJson(PluginServlet.java:373)
at se.findout.plugin.PluginServlet.doGet(PluginServlet.java:115)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:622)
... 
at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

2019-11-18 14:31:52,059 http-nio-8080-exec-11 ERROR [c.a.j.web.servlet.InternalServerErrorServlet] {errorId=455b719b-6183-49c2-93a0-05747b870c9b, interpretedMsg=, cause=java.lang.NullPointerException, stacktrace=java.lang.NullPointerException
at se.findout.plugin.PluginServlet.getCurrentUserJson(PluginServlet.java:373) [?:?]
at se.findout.plugin.PluginServlet.doGet(PluginServlet.java:115) [?:?]

at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61) [tomcat-util.jar:8.5.6]
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) [?:1.8.0_102]
, referer=http://servicedesk.xxxxxxxx.xxx/login.jsp?os_destination=%2Fdefault.jsp, servletErrorMessage=}

[JP _AC Bielefeld Leader_]

Hi,

is this a service desk reachable from the internet? The Jira version look a little old. If yes, you might have run into some security issues.

I would contact Atlassian support...

Best

JP

[Miguel Borges]

Hi JP,

thank you for your hint. I've in fact updated our current Service Desk but the issue remained.

The root cause for this was an "Announcement Banner" that had malformed HTML in it. I had to delete it in the database, as I had no UI to do it.

The malformation was a comment block that was missing a dash closing the block (was <!-- -> and should be <!-- --> )

The stack trace I've published is unrelated.