upgrading JIRA from 5.1 - 6.3.8

[Gregory Hicks]

I am upgrading JIRA from 5.1 to the newest release and I am getting conflicting answers from JIRA support and what I am reading online. Atlassian support says I can go from 5.1 directly to 6.3.8, what I am reading online JIRA techs are saying i need to update to each release at a time. What should I do here and by each release do I need to install the minor releases as well? 

I have updated stage major release at a time from 5.1 - 5.2 - 6.0 - 6.1 - 6.2 - 6.3. One thing I did notice is that once I upgraded Agile in stage I got a note saying that Agile might not work as well as it could because it's missing updates. This isn't the exact error but I cannot for the life of me find where I saved the error. 

So what should I do here, does each major release have the previous minor releases built in? Should I updated every single minor and major release? 

Let me know.

[Stephen Gurnick]

Coincidentally - I'm in the process of performing the same upgrade (from JIRA 5.1 to 6.3.7). In my testing I was able to go directly from 5.1 to 6.3.7 without first going to any intermediary versions. 

What you want to make sure to do is read the release notes and upgrade notes for each major version that you're skipping. There aren't many, but there are some important items Atlassian has changed that you need to be aware of. But the upgrade process should take care of most everything for you. 

Also if you've made any customizations to configuration files (e.g. setenv.sh, server.xml, cacerts, etc.) you'll need to restore these after the upgrade is complete. But don't just restore the entire files as the upgrade will most likely change other aspects that you'll want to maintain. Just put your customizations back in the appropriate locations.

Other than that, you should be fine.

[Benito Picarelli]

Hi Gregory,

My suggestion would be to check the versions of the plugins that you are currently using to make sure they have appropriate versions for the version you intend to upgrade to beforehand. Also, if you are upgrading production, make sure to test this out in a dev environment to avoid possible problems as well.

[Stephen Gurnick]

No we aren't using the SVN add-on.  Getting your add-ons to function in the upgraded version will most likely be the area the causes the greatest headache. I had a few that had some issues and it was a matter of working the vendors to sort things out.

[Gregory Hicks]

This is good to know, thanks for you input on this matter. Were you by any chance using the SVN plugin for JIRA? I just tried to install it and am getting a license error. 

This add-on failed to enable. It may require a license. Refer to the logs for more information.

[Gregory Hicks]

Also does 6.3.8 have all the fixes for 6.3.1 - 6.3.3 - 6.3.4.r2 - 6.3.5 - 6.3.6 - 6.3.7? Or do I need to install each update once I upgrade to 6.3.

[Norman Abramovitz]

Releases are accumulative, so you do not need to previous 6.3.x releases unless the upgrade notes states so. That is the reason you must read the upgrade notes.