License Too Old For Build Jira Service Desk

Afto Kinito May 17, 2018

Hi,

I recently upgraded my Jira Server installation to 7.9.2 after renewing my Jira Software license.

However, I also have Jira Service Desk installed on this instance but its license is outside its support period and I am no longer interested in using Jira Service Desk.

I am getting the following error when starting Jira Server and I have no way to access Jira in order to uninstall Service Desk: 

License Too Old For Build: We found a problem with your JIRA license

Your current JIRA Service Desk license doesn't allow you to upgrade to this version of JIRA (7.9.2). JIRA Service Desk expired on 30/Mar/18 3:00 PM, and you can currently only upgrade to versions released prior to this date. Alternatively you can renew your license at my.atlassian.com which will allow you to upgrade to this version of JIRA (7.9.2). You can enter your new license here.
See our documentation for more information on licensing errors.

 

Please, advise.

1 answer

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Answer accepted
Andy Heinzer
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 17, 2018

This can be tricky to manage.  Your Jira database still has a record of an old Service Desk license key.   But since that license is expired, you are not able to upgrade service desk in this case.   You probably don't mind that fact if you are not using service desk.  But this old license for service desk can prevent upgrades to Jira Core/Software as well in some cases.

However in order to either update the license key, or remove the license key via the Jira web interface, you need to have service desk installed in order to have those options in the Jira's UPM or Versions & Licenses page (depending on the version of Jira).

I can see a couple of different ways to resolve this problem.  Any one of these could be done to get past this:

  1. If this is a test upgrade, then one way to get around this problem is to return to the original installation that has Service Desk installed, and delete the license key from this Jira site for that product.  If the source was a Jira 7.x / JSD 3.x this could be done from the Cog Icon -> Applications -> Versions and Licenses page, provided service desk is installed.  If on Jira 6.x / JSD 2.x or earlier, this would be done in the UPM:  Cog Icon -> Add-ons -> Manage Add-ons. In both cases, you would have to click the trash can icon next to that application/plugin in order to delete the license from your instance.
  2. I'm not sure if this is an option in all cases, but if the screen you see shows you the option to apply a new license, you could generate a temporary evaluation license for Service Desk at https://my.atlassian.com and then apply that license key just to get past this upgrade.   After the upgrade to Jira Software is complete, you can then install Service desk, just long enough in order to delete that evaluation license key from your system, and then uninstall service desk.
  3. If this isn't a test instance, or you don't want to have to revert/rollback the upgrade, you could try to use the KB How to Get and Update JIRA License String from the Database.  This KB explains how you can find the license keys for Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Desk in the database.   The SQL query for any Jira 7.0.5 or higher would be: 
    SELECT * FROM productlicense;
    This will return the Jira application licenses in your database.  Now you need to be careful here because you don't want to remove your valid Jira Software license here, but it should be possible for you to delete the other record in this table that contains the Service Desk license key.   If you are not sure which is which, you should be able to compare the string in that field against your known license key and then remove the other row from this table.  If you are not sure which is which, feel free to post the results of the SQL select query to this thread.  I will redact the full license key after the fact and let you know what command you can run in SQL to remove this old license key.   Of course before you make any changes to the SQL database directly, I would recommend that you stop Jira first, and create a backup before you make changes to the database like this.  Once the change is made, you can then start Jira and in turn I would not expect you to see that same warning about the expired license anymore.
Afto Kinito May 17, 2018

Deleting the license from the database worked like a charm.

Thanks!

Like Broderick Johansson likes this
Reilly Brogan July 29, 2021

If anyone in the future encounters this error as a result of upgrading past the last version allowed by the license but then still encounters the error after downgrading what happened is that the "too new" version updated the bundled plugins and the downgraded version isn't replacing these upgraded plugins with older versions. This is what is causing the error to still trigger even though you've downgraded the version of Jira.

You need to delete any "too new" plugins from the JIRA_HOME/plugins/installed-plugins. These files will have the "too new" version as part of the file name so they should be easily identified. You can then restart Jira with the downgraded version and it should work.

Like Pavel Junek likes this
Pavel Junek
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
June 30, 2022

Thank you, this solved my problem.

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