Jira with GitLab

This guide provides steps to set up a Jira Server as well as some troubleshooting steps from a Support Engineer’s perspective

What is Jira Software

Jira Software is part of a family of products designed to help teams of all types manage work. Originally, Jira was designed as a bug and issue tracker. But today, Jira has evolved into a powerful work management tool for all kinds of use cases, from requirements and test case management to agile software development.

For more information about various uses of Jira Please check out the Get started with Jira Software

How to Set Up Jira Server

You need to create an instance from the Support-resources. Ensure nothing is using port 443. We will set up Jira to use HTTPS for GitLab integration.

Prerequisite software

You need to install Java as Jira uses java JVM.
You need to install certbot, python3-certbot-apache for you to generate certificates for HTTPS

Installing Jira and prerequisites

Install Java because Jira uses Java JVM

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apt install openjdk-11-jdk  openjdk-11-jre

Create a folder to store Jira software for installation.
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mkdir jira && cd jira
Choose the version of Jira that you want to download from Atlassian Jira Website.

We will be using the Jira 8.13 version so that we can test all supported GitLab integrations. However, this will not work for OAuth2.0 integration so we will later upgrade Jira to test the connection.
Select the Jira version that you want to download.
Accept and right-click submit button to get the download URL. (Choose copy link address during the file download)

Use wget <URL> command to download the Jira installer. Example:

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wget https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/downloads/binary/atlassian-jira-software-8.13.7-x64.bin

wget data

Change the script to be executable using

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chmod a+x atlassian-jira-software-8.13.7-x64.bin

Run the installer and enter Y if it requests you to install OpenJDK.
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sudo ./atlassian-jira-software-8.13.7-x64.bin
Follow the installation instructions and enter default for all questions asked in the installation.
Run Jira setup. You will activate a 30 day trial period. Select set up Jira manually.
You now have Jira setup and accessible in your localhost:8080.
You will have to set up Jira before using it. After you access from the browser, Select I’II set it up myself.
In the next step, select Built-in (for evaluation or demonstration).
While waiting for the database to be created, login to your atlassian account and open https://my.atlassian.com/product . Generate a license trial license for your server.
On the next page, select Jira Software for Product and Jira Software (Data Center) for License type. Enter any details for the remaining fields. For Server ID, you will get it when the server finishes setting up the database.
After the database creation is complete, the next section will be setting application properties. Leave it as default and click Next.

![Jira Application Propertpplication_properties.png
In the next scene, specify your license Key. Copy the Server ID and paste it to the New trial License Generation screen and click on Generate License.
Copy and paste the license key generated and update license in your Jira setup.
Create a Jira Admin user and continue with the next steps.
Continue with the setup and create a test project. “GITLAB”.
Create a test issue that we will be using to test with.

Adding a lets-encrypt certificate to enable HTTPS connection

NOTE: HTTPS connection is required for DVCS Connector

Install certbot to enable you to generate the certificate

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sudo apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install certbot

Optionally, you can install the Certbot Apache plugin:

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sudo apt-get install python3-certbot-apache

Generate a certificate for your domain. Input your e-mail when prompted.
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sudo certbot certonly --standalone -d www.example.com
If everything goes fine. A new SSL will be issued at the below location. Navigate to the below directory and view files.
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cd /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com ls
You should be able to see the following list:
- cert.pem
- chain.pem
- fullchain.pem
- privkey.pem
NOTE: In case you get a Problem binding to port 80: Could not bind to IPv4 or IPv6. error, check the PID of the application using port 80 then stop the application running on that port and retry generating the certificates.
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# Check with lsof lsof -i :80 # You can also use netstat -antlup | grep 80 # If it's Apache, you can run the following: systemctl stop apache2 systemctl disable apache2

Convert keypair and certificate to Java Keystore

NOTE: I will be using dwainaina-gitlab-jira-test-runner.sr.gitlab.support as my domain for the rest of the examples.

Create a PKCS12 that contains both your full chain and the private key. You need to have OpenSSL installed for that.

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openssl pkcs12 -export -out /tmp/dwainaina-gitlab-jira-test-runner.sr.gitlab.support.p12 \
   -in /etc/letsencrypt/live/dwainaina-gitlab-jira-test-runner.sr.gitlab.support/fullchain.pem \
   -inkey /etc/letsencrypt/live/dwainaina-gitlab-jira-test-runner.sr.gitlab.support/privkey.pem \
   -name tomcat

Replace the values accordingly. For name, we put it tomcat you may change the alias to anything you like but please remember this name.

Now convert your .p12 file to a .jks file with the command below. Replace <your-domain-name> with your domain name, and <password> with the password you used to generate your .p12 file:

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keytool -importkeystore \
-deststorepass <password> -destkeypass <password> -destkeystore /tmp/<your-domain-name>.jks \
-srckeystore /tmp/<your-domain-name>.p12  -srcstoretype PKCS12 -srcstorepass <password> \
-alias tomcat

Copy the generated JKS file to /opt/atlassian/jira/conf

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cp /tmp/dwainaina-gitlab-jira-test-runner.sr.gitlab.support.jks  /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/

Change directory to /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/ and edit the server.xml. Before editing your server.xml file, consider backing it up first, just in case you need to quickly roll back.
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cd /opt/atlassian/jira/conf cp server.xml server_backup.xml vim server.xml

Comment out to disable HTTP.

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 <!--
        <Connector port="8080" relaxedPathChars="[]|" relaxedQueryChars="[]|{}^&#x5c;&#x60;&quot;&lt;&gt;"
                   maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" connectionTimeout="20000" enableLookups="false"
                   maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" protocol="HTTP/1.1" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" redirectPort="8443"
                   acceptCount="100" disableUploadTimeout="true" bindOnInit="false"/>
         -->

Add the following just before the closure of the </Service> block in server.xml

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<Connector port="443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
              maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" SSLEnabled="true"
              maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25"
              enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
              acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
              sslEnabledProtocols="TLSv1.2,TLSv1.3"
        clientAuth="false" useBodyEncodingForURI="true"
        relaxedPathChars="[]|" relaxedQueryChars="[]|{}^&#x5c;&#x60;&quot;&lt;&gt;"
              keyAlias="tomcat" keystoreFile="conf/dwainaina-gitlab-jira-test-runner.sr.gitlab.support.jks" keystorePass="Jira_PASSWORD" keystoreType="JKS" />

Replace the values for your keyAlias, keystoreFile and keystrokePass accordingly.

Edit the web.xml in conf folder and add the following so that all requests will be handled using the HTTPS. Again, before editing your web.xml file, consider backing it up first, just in case you need to quickly roll back.

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cd /opt/atlassian/jira/conf
cp web.xml web_backup.xml
vim web.xml

Add the following lines right after the <web-app ... version="3.1"> tag:

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<security-constraint>
  <web-resource-collection>
    <web-resource-name>all-except-attachments</web-resource-name>
    <url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
    <url-pattern>*.jspa</url-pattern>
    <url-pattern>/browse/*</url-pattern>
    <url-pattern>/issues/*</url-pattern>
 </web-resource-collection>
  <user-data-constraint>
    <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
  </user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>

Optional: Specify Jira home directory if it is not at default location:

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vim <installation-directory>/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/jira-application.properties
jira.home = /PATH/TO/JIRA-HOME

Restart tomcat and check if the site is available in HTTPS. If you can’t find a service with the name tomcat, restart the jira service:
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systemctl status jira systemctl restart jira systemctl status jira
NOTE: HTTPS port might not be accessible after you restart tomcat. Run the following command to enable port and apply settings:
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echo 'net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=0' > /etc/sysctl.d/50-unprivileged-ports.conf sysctl --system

The site should now be available as a HTTPs address. Use the credentials you used to configure to now log in.

NOTE: If you still can’t access the site using HTTPS, check the permissions of your /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/<your-domanin-name>.jks file. Every user should be able to at least read the file. Replace <your-domain-name> with your domain name.

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ll /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/<your-domanin-name>.jks

#If you need to change permissions, set it to at least 444 and restart the jira service
chmod 444 /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/<your-domanin-name>.jks

#Restart the jira service for changes to take effect
systemctl status jira
systemctl restart jira
systemctl status jira

Common Troubleshooting Steps for Jira tickets

Please check out the common known errors listed in our documentation: Jira - Troubleshooting and Troubleshooting your DVCS connection
Clarify with customers with integration they are referring to - we have GitLab Jira Integration and Jira Development Panel integration.
It is also helpful to get their Jira version - particularly: Cloud or Server? Is Server which version? (Note: 8.14 later links differently)
Check their configuration, walk through the steps. NOTE: Some customers confused the configuration of the two integrations, for example using the jira user created in GitLab Jira Integration as the Term/Account for setting up DVCS account for their Jira Development Panel. This will load the repo of the jira user’s personal namespace which usually has 0 repos.
If all the configurations are correct, we might need to get the logs depending on where the error is occurring, they might need to check the log files on Jira, they can tail JIRA_HOME/log/atlassian-jira.log while reproducing the error. If it’s Jira DVCS connection has wrong oauth scope: Issue when integrating with Jira DVCS, check out the workaround.
We also have a list of useful Rails cheat code, this is handy when we need to check the values of the Jira configurations on GitLab.

Last modified December 18, 2023: Reword Gitlab to GitLab (b164da16)

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