CSS and JS include files fail to load when running under IBM Portal in Jira Server 8.13

[adamtwarner94]

We are having a strange issue when running Jira Core Server 8.13.7 under an IBM Webseal portal.    Almost all of the CSS and JS include files fail to load, with an empty response error in the dev tools console, including batch.css and batch.js.   We do not see this issue with an identical configuration for Jira 8.5.   Furthermore we have the problem in the Test and Prod Webseal environments with 8.13 but not the Dev, which are all configured the same as far as we can tell.  (We are also reaching out to IBM of course)

The requests do reach the Jira server and are logged as HTTP 200 response in the access log, but the files do not get back to the client browser.   We are running under a load balancer and reverse proxy, but hitting these directly bypassing the portal everything works fine.   

Multiple, clean browsers tested.   Even tried running Jira in Safe mode to make sure it wasn't a plugin issue.

Just wondering if anyone has seen anything similar that could point us in the right direction.

[Daniel C Berlin]

In case anyone else is having this problem:

Thanks to Adam and other customers, we have made some progress on resolving this problem:

• The Last-Modified header value of 1969 is confirmed to be responsible for the problem.
• The workaround we have currently is to disable content-caching in WebSeal.  (The proxy component and other functionality is not dependent on this header and will work fine.)
• The problem occurs only on some instances, but so far, a few versions of Confluence and Jira are known to be affected.
• IBM is aware of the problem.
• We are working on this problem in https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-72950.

If you are experiencing this problem, please try disabling content-caching in WebSeal to confirm.  A .har file showing the timestamp of the Last-Modified header will also confirm this problem. If you need help diagnosing this issue, please contact support!

Thanks again, Adam!

[Daniel C Berlin]

Hi Adam,

Have you submitted a support request about this issue?  I'm investigating a similar problem right now.  .har files show GET requests for .js & .css files, but Jira renders without .css...  also behind the Webseal proxy.

Glad to see you are able to circumvent the Webseal!

[adamtwarner94]

Hi Daniel, have not yet because in the past Atlassian support has not wanted to help with environment specific server issues like this.   Especially now with the shift to cloud and deprecation of server.

However with the help of IBM Webseal support we were able to pinpoint the likely cause of the communication breakdown between Webseal and Jira, and this may be worth submitting to support to see if they have any ideas:

We discovered that the "Last-Modified" response header coming from Jira on our 8.13.7 install is "Wed, 31 Dec 1969 23:59:59 GMT" instead of "Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT" on our prior 8.5.5 install.   Since "Wed, 31 Dec 1969 23:59:59 GMT" is one second prior to the beginning of Unix time Webseal can't seem to handle it.

Have not yet uncovered any clue as to why this might be.  FYI we are running on CentOS 7.

[adamtwarner94]

@Daniel C Berlin I've submitted this under JSP-416315

[Daniel C Berlin]

Hi Adam,

Thanks a lot for this info. It's true this is mostly outside of the scope of our support (Proxies are commonly used with our products, but not necessarily something we can advise on).

That said, we'll do what we can, and it looks like you have collected information I'd like to have for the sake of other customers.  (If we find a WebSeal configuration setting that can allow this data through, for example, we will publish a knowledge base article regardless of whether the configuration is something we officially support.)

I've found your Issue and will be in touch with my teammate who's working on it. Thanks again!