Jira Software Server 9.12.2 complains about too old license

[Stefan Ortgies]

We are still using jira software server on our own docker swarm.

We restarted our jira today (in March, no more support).

Now our jira is not starting up and complains about our version being too new / license too old...

Version 9.12.2 was release in January, so well before the Support deadline, why is jira not starting up?

Backstory:

We now pinned the docker image to 9.12.2, but it was set to "latest" before and at one we started the "latest" container and it tried to run 9.14. Which did result in an error message. The we switched back to 9.12.2 (which seems to match our database schema version 91200002).

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

Your current Jira Software license doesn't allow you to upgrade to this version of JIRA (9.12.2). Jira Software expired on 14. Feb 2024 13:00, 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 (9.12.2). You can enter your new license here.
See our documentation for more information on licensing errors.

[Martin Wilhelm · Accepted solution]

So, I debugged it a bit. The following does the trick (at least for me, under Linux) to recover from the above sitation without playing back a backup and without touching the database:

1) Stop Jira completely, double check that it is not running anymore.

2) Downgrade to Jira 9.12.4 or whatever version is supported by your license.

3) Delete these plugins:
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-bamboo-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/portfolio-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-software-application-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-greenhopper-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-portfolio-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-software-monitor-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-fisheye-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-transition-triggers-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/jira-software-plugin-9.12.5.jar
<jira_data>/plugins/installed-plugins/team-management-plugin-9.12.5.jar

<jira_data> is where your Jira is storing its persistent data. Also called "JIRA_HOME".

Note: 9.12.5 is, by today, the only "too new" version available. In the future there could be more "too new" versions. Check whats there in your plugins folder and delete what does not match your supported version.

4) Start Jira 9.12.4 and enjoy.

Simple as that. It looks like that the "too new" Jira brings some plugins which then "taint" the installation even if you downgrade back to a supported version.

All the above with NO WARRANTY, I am not lieable if something goes wrong. You do it under your own responsibility.

Good luck!

Martin

[Martin Wilhelm]

@Stefan Ortgies @Andreas Liebrich ^

[Stefan Ortgies]

Hi Martin,

thank you very much!

After deleting the 10 plugins I could login into my Jira again.

But I still had some problems, my Kanban Board was not showing up on my Dashboard.

In the Admin Menu under Applications -> Versions & licenses Jira told me that I have a license for Jira software but that it's not installed. A simple click on "Install" fixed that.

When I look into /plugins/installed-plugins/ folder now, I have all the plugins again, but for the correct version 9.12.4

Thank you very much again!

[Martin Wilhelm]

Good catch! Yes, you are right - the correct versions of those plugins need to be there.

On my site:
./jira-software-application-9.12.4.jar
./jira-greenhopper-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./jira-software-monitor-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./jira-bamboo-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./jira-portfolio-9.12.4.jar
./jira-transition-triggers-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./jira-software-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./portfolio-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./team-management-plugin-9.12.4.jar
./jira-fisheye-plugin-9.12.4.jar

I thought, if they are missing and no "too new" version is there, Jira automatically downloads them.

Only open question now is: For whom is Jira-server 9.12.5 and later?

Martin

[Andreas Liebrich]

Same problem here:

As soon as you upgrade to a version AFTER license expiry date you get the message

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

OK, my bad.

But when you roll back and use a version PRIOR to the license expira date, the message remains and JIRA still cannot be started. Look at this clearly wrong message, as @Andy Heinzer confirmed above:

The release date for 9.12.4 was 12-Feb-2024. 

Your current Jira Software license doesn't allow you to upgrade to this version
of JIRA (9.12.4). Jira Software expired on 14/Feb/24 2:00 PM, and you can 
currently only upgrade to versions released prior to this date.

@Andy Heinzer Isn't it possible to figure out, which database table / entry / etc. has to be resetted to allow a correct startup?

Thanks and greetings,
Andi

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi @Stefan Ortgies 

I understand that you are trying to use a Jira server license key to upgrade to a version released before your license expired.  This should work, as I have confirmed that 9.12.2 was released 10 January 2024 according to the release notes.

The error message returned to you appears slightly off from what I would expect.  Specifically the way the date is represented in your error message of

14. Feb

Depending on your region and language settings some dates can be represented differently.  I would have just expected the date to be 14 Feb 2024.  But the existence of that extra period leads me to believe that your localization settings for your environment might be causing the date of the license to read incorrectly.

We have an existing bug where other users can get a similar error when using something like a Buddhist calendar for the system Jira is running on. See bug JRASERVER-21387 

While I'm confident you're not using that calendar, I think the workaround from that bug ticket might be able to help here by allowing that license to be properly check the date in question.

The workaround from that bug being:

 Workaround

1) Set the localization back to anything that uses the Gregorian calendar.

2) Follow KB on Setting properties and options on startup to add below JVM entry to the startup option.

-Duser.language=en -Duser.country=US

 This change might just be temporary, until at least Jira can startup and check that it has a valid license for that version. After which point you should then be able to alter the language/country settings within the JVM parameters.  Try this and see if this helps to allow Jira to correctly read the date value of your license key.

[Stefan Ortgies]

Thanks for your quick reply!

We are based in Germany, so we are using Gregorian calendar with German locale (while still using English language in UI).

I added the startup options to our docker compose and re-started the container.

Then I confirmed that the options are actually used by looking at the logs.

Sadly the error message remains (with identical date format).

We have a recent backup and might just try restoring it, maybe that helps.

[Andy Heinzer]

I was able to lookup your license key and I was able to apply this to an existing 9.12.2 version.  I can confirm it works there.  But I'm not quite sure I understand why it isn't working for your environment.

Could you check to see if there might be other Jira product licenses applied currently?  One way to do this would be by SQL query of:

SELECT * FROM productlicense;

On the Jira database.  This would return an entry for each Jira Software, Jira Core, and Jira Service Management license key applied to your instance.   If memory serves, I recall that having an expired key for something like Core or JSM applied could also prevent the upgrade for Jira Software - but the error message might not be correctly identifying the specific product license that is too old here.

[Stefan Ortgies]

Hi Andy,

sorry for my late reply.

We actually had a quite recent backup which we restored.

The backup contained version 9.12.2, which I successfully upgrade to 9.12.4 (by supplying version tag 9.12 for the docker image).

This worked fine for a couple days.

Do I understand that correctly that the whole 9.12 release branch is supported by our server license?

Yesterday we restarted the jira container and it upgraded to 9.12.5.

Sadly I was greeted again by the same error message as above: "License Too Old For Build"

I went to our docker-compose.yml file and changed the image tag to 9.12.4 (which worked before), restarted the container, but it still complained!

Sadly this time I don't have a recent backup and would lose data on a restore...

It would be nice if you could supply us with a way to fix this....

As asked before, here is the output from the SQL query. There is only one license in that table:

[redacted]

[Andy Heinzer]

Do I understand that correctly that the whole 9.12 release branch is supported by our server license?

No, that is not correct. You need to look at the date of the specific version release to determine if it will work with your license. You can find the release date for 9.12.4 over in https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/issues-resolved-in-9-12-4-1354596840.html

The release date for 9.12.4 was 12-Feb-2024. 

But if you look at the release date for 9.12.5 over in https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRASOFTWARE/Issues+resolved+in+9.12.5 it is listed as 6-Mar-2024, which would be after that license expired.  Hence you won't be able to upgrade beyond 9.12.4 with that license.  All server licenses have been set to expire by 15-Feb-2024 as we have ended the sales and renewals for all server licenses. 

[Stefan Ortgies]

Okay...

Still, why can't I run my jira at 9.12.4 anymore?

[Martin Wilhelm]

I ran into the same issue. And it looks like, as soon as you try to upgrade to a version released AFTER the license expiry-date, your installation becomes "violated" (tainted). When that happens, even downgrading/upgrading to versions BEFORE the license expiry-date do not work anymore. Something must have been placed/written into jira-home which causes this.

Only chance to get out of that problem is to replay a backup (inkl. jira-home) to restore a last known working version and then carefully upgrade to a version which does not "violate" the license expiry-date.

[Martin Wilhelm]

And, a generic question:

@Andy Heinzersaid:
"All server licenses have been set to expire by 15-Feb-2024 as we have ended the sales and renewals for all server licenses. "

But Atlassian has released a newer *Server* (not Datacenter!) version of e.g. Jira AFTER that date.

Example: 9.12.5 (langfristige Unterstützung)    06-Mar-2024

Who is able to install such a version if every Server-customer got expired on 15-Feb-2024? For whom is this version? Technically, it would be impossible for anyone to upgrade to 9.12.5? Or do I miss anything?

Martin