Jira not able to start

[yashudeep jain]

Our jira server version is not able to get start even though we started it several times but it does not start

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Take a look at the logs (both catalina logs under JIRA_INSTALL/logs and atlassian-jira.log file under JIRA_HOME/log folder) to see if there are any errors.

[yashudeep jain]

I went to see log file under jira/logs but there was no entry in log file for today, i think since it does not even starts so there is no entry and hence no clue whats going wrong

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's probably worth explaining what happens when you start a Jira system, so you can trace through the process and look at the right things.

There is a script, usually called start-jira.sh - this is the thing you physically run yourself to kick everything else off.  It will normally output a few lines and say "jira has started".  That's not strictly true, it should really say "I have told Jira to start".  If this is failing, it should tell you on-screen why it is going wrong.

Next, it's actually Tomcat that runs.  This is more complex than what I'm about to say, but you don't need the detail.  Tomcat is an application server which will run Jira later.  Tomcat logs in detail, even just the attempt to start it will be logged.  Look in <jira install>/log for a file called "catalina.out".  It *will* be there if the script got as far as attempting to start Tomcat.  It might only have a couple of lines in it, but it will be there.

Last, there's Jira, an application running inside Tomcat.  Once the Tomcat has started in full, it looks through the config for applications and starts them all.  In the case of Jira, there is only one in there.  If it fails catastrophically, Tomcat will log it in catalina.out as above, and no other logs.  If it starts, then the application log is written to in <jira home>/logs. 

When jira does not start, we need those logs.  It won't do nothing at all, it is going to tell you where it is failing somewhere.  So:

• What do you see in <jira home>/logs ?
• What do you see in <jira installation>/log ?
• What message do you get from the start-jira.sh script?

[Suhas P]

Delete the lock file and try again. Keep logs open with 'tail -f catalina.out' (for linux) and see where it fails and troubleshoot firther.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Only delete the lock file if you are 100% sure Jira is not running already.  You should only have a lock file there if it is running, or something killed it (a clean shut down, or not-catastrophic failure to start will remove the file)