Jira Server alongside existing tomcat

Ryan Williams July 20, 2017

So... my understanding is that Jira 6 was available as a WAR file, but Jira 7 is not. However I'd like to install Jira on my existing tomcat box (currently tomcat 6 but we're migrating to tomcat 8 ASAP). Any tips or tutorials on doing this? I've tried grabbing the zip file and putting the atlassian-jira folder into webapps while selectively copying parts of server.xml into my own server.xml but that doesn't seem to work.

Thanks in advance.

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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July 20, 2017

It's a right pain trying to unpick a JIRA from the installation - you can copy the web-app, but you need to replicate all the Tomcat config in a different shape - compare your Tomcat's conf and bin directory with an installed JIRA 7 set. 

Also, bear in mind

  • JIRA 7 does not work in Tomcat 6.  I am not sure if it works in 7 either.
  • You will not be supported if you do this.  A support request raised with Atlassian could well get a response of "install it from our installer and migrate over, then we can look at it" (Probably won't, but they could)
Ryan Williams July 20, 2017

Well that's a pain. I suspect that's going to cause more issues than it's worth, in terms of keeping both our existing application and jira working, and having them play nicely together.

Looks like it's time for plan B then:

  • Existing tomcat infrastructure remains as is
  • Jira runs on a container with port 8080 exposed as 8081 to the host
  • Apache httpd currently routes 80 to 8080 and 8443 to 443 over AJP, so it could route differently according to directory (ie /jira) so call 8081 for jira.

It's a shame there's no simple way to do it but I guess it is what it is.. unless anyone has any better ideas?

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