Not able to view attachment in Jira Software Server 8.15

[Pramodh M]

Hello Community,

Did you recently upgraded to the 8.15 version of Jira.

The issue has been found saying attachments are not able to view in Jira Server.

If so please check whether these files are present in installation directory folder jira/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/jira/web/servlet

ViewThumbnailServlet.class
AbstractViewFileServlet.class
ViewAttachmentServlet.class

If not present add it from the previous backup copying each file to the location I have specified.

The link to the files is here

If it did not solve, please check this link from the knowledge base here https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/existing-attachments-will-not-open-after-migrating-jira-server-785453577.html

Thanks,
Pramodh

[Matt Doar]

I think the KB is refering to an older way that Jira stored attachment files, using the attachment filename, which had lots of encoding problems, so it was changed to the current approach that uses the attachment id.

If those files are missing, that sounds like a packaging problem

[Pramodh M]

Yes. Thanks for noticing it @Matt Doar 

Since it may be possible, migration is also one case we find this problem. So I attached a link.

But I'm sure the files are missing in the 8.15 version.

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Pramodh,

I understand that you recently upgrade Jira Server and since that time you are unable to see attachments.  While I have not yet found any other support cases that are specific to this problem with the 8.15.0 version, I have encountered a number of other support cases where this can happen when also migrating or more succinctly, trying to migrate and upgrade at the same time.

I'm not sure if this applies to you in case yet, but it is a common situation to test out an upgrade in a staging environment.  If that happens, then you need to make sure that the attachments in the $JIRAHOME/data/ folder are in place on the operating system BEFORE you start-up the new Jira installation to begin the upgrade.   The reason for this is that some Jira upgrades will attempt to run an upgradetask that can change the filenames of attachments.  However if those files are not found on disk at the time that upgradetask runs, then Jira is unable to rename these later (while the database references of these filesnames are still being changed).

This tends to result in all the previous attachments being broken in Jira, but new attachments added after the upgrade work just fine.  If this happens, I find that the best solution tends to be to perform this upgrade again in a new staging instance.  Even if you have already started using the first upgrade as a production instance, if you have a backup of the Jira database from before the upgrade, and a backup of the $JIRAHOME/data/ folder from that time, you can perform this upgrade once more in a different environment, this time with those files in the correct location.  If successful, you can then just copy the $JIRAHOME/data/ folder contents from this 2nd upgrade attempt into the same location on the other 8.15.0 Jira installation.

If there was no migration, and this was an in place upgrade, then I would suggest creating a support case so that we can gather a support zip in order to better understand the problem at hand here.

I hope this helps.

Andy

[Pramodh M]

Hi @Andy Heinzer

I'm not sure where these files should be but I guess should be in /opt/atlassian/jira/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/jira/web/servlet/viewfile directory

ViewThumbnailServlet.class
AbstractViewFileServlet.class
ViewAttachmentServlet.class

Please find the supporting community questions and please help me understand the situation here

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Attachments-in-issues-unable-to-open-after-upgrade-to-8-15/qaq-p/1601371

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Service-Management/Can-t-view-attachments-after-updating-to-JIRA-Service-Management/qaq-p/1605999

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Broken-images-after-JIRA-update/qaq-p/1607020

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Not-able-to-view-attachments/qaq-p/1608704

Please help me understand here

Thanks,
Pramodh

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Pramodh,

Thanks for posting those other threads.  It appears that for at least these other users, the upgrade to 8.15.0 has left the attachments unusable.  One such screenshot would tend to indicate that the attachment file was not found by Jira. 

I see that you appear to have found a work-around to restore some .class files from a previous version, but this should not be necessary, and I would not recommend this work-around.  Instead if you see other posts about this problem, please recommend that users create a support case about this problem until we can clearly determine the source of this problem.  While expired or starter licenses cannot do this (their only support option is here in Community), all other Jira Server/Data Center licenses should be able to do this by going to https://support.atlassian.com/contact

I need to know more about what steps you took exactly to upgrade Jira here.

• What this upgrade done to an existing installation of Jira? 
• Or was this a new install of Jira 8.15.0 that tried to copy/import from another installation?
• What happens if you attach a new file to an issue here?  Is it visible or does it behave the same way as all other attachments?
• Do you still have the $JIRAHOME/log/atlassian-jira.log or the $JIRAINSTALL/logs/catalina.out from the time of this first 8.15.0 startup?  I ask because these logs will tell us more details about whether or not there might have been some error during the upgrade such that some upgradetask might have failed.  This could be the clue we need to determine the cause of the problem here.

It might be possible there is a bug here, but in order to create such a ticket, we need to have the precise steps to reproduce this problem.

My initial suggestion was that this could be caused by the attachments themselves not being in place at the time of the upgrade.  These files should be located in $JIRAHOME/data/attachments/ and not inside the $JIRAINSTALL/ folder at all.  I would not suggest making any changes to the $JIRAINSTALL/ folder at this time.

In a fresh installation of 8.15.0 those three files .class no longer exist, and attachments appear to be functional in my own testing.  I believe this is by design.  Which would suggest that some aspect of these other upgrades has failed if these attachments are not visible there.

Andy