Setup: JIRA couldn't create the jira.home directory

[Michael Arias]

Hi everyone,

I was doing a system restore and when it finished I restarted the Jira Server, but now the page shows me this:

JIRA had problems starting up
This page is for JIRA administrators. If you're seeing this page, your JIRA administrator is probably working to restore the service.

JIRA encountered the following problems during startup. You need to fix any errors before you start JIRA again.

Setup: JIRA couldn't create the jira.home directory
Ensure JIRA has permission to create and write to the jira.home directory /data/jirasandbox.digitaslbi.io-home.
Review our documentation for more information on setting your JIRA home.

Learn more
If you're unable to fix the problems and need to contact support, we can respond faster if you provide the logs of your instance.

i've already checked and my profile has the permissions to run that scripts, because I'm working as Root profile and he is the owner of all files in Jira.io/app and Jira.io/home. I've restarted several times my instance and haven't gotten any good result.

Can any one please help me?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

>my profile has the permissions to run that scripts, because I'm working as Root profile and he is the owner of all files in Jira.io/app and Jira.io/home

Your profile is not the one that will be (or should be) running Jira.  There should be a user called "jira" created for running Jira - that account needs to own all the directories and contents of the installation and data directories.

[Michael Arias]

And do you know how i can run scripts as that "jira" user?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You don't usually do that.  The installers run as root, create the user and set up the startup system to run the processes as the user.  You don't normally use an interactive shell with them, or run scripts.

If you do need to, try "su - <username>" - that may fail, in which case, check /etc/passwd for their login shell, it's probably set to "nologin"

[Michael Arias]

Okay, thanks Nic.

[gregelofson]

I ran into a related issue when installing Jira 8.5.0 using the express mode (long story). 

Going through the Home Directory, today, I was blocked from cd'ing into /jira. I checked the file ownership and it belonged to root (re your comment, Nic, that "jira" should have ownership of all the files in the installation and home dirs. Beneath that jira/root barrier, eveything is owned by 'jira' again. 

First question, is this to be expected? If not, is it enough to simply chown the root ownership to 'jira'?

Because of these odd anomalies in the past, I've sometimes created a service account, added it to the wheel so it had root rights, changed the user in the jira/properties file to be the new service account, then chowned owner to the new service account to own everything in the installation and home directory.