Gadgets Plugin is disabled as module 'dashboard-item' problem

[David Rayner]

Jira is failing to start after a server reboot, we get an error that the com.atlassian.gadgets.directory plugin fails to load. I have tried to increase the timeout, as per other technotes but this isn't the issue.

Earlier in the log file shows:

2018-04-03 15:51:43,108 JIRA-Bootstrap ERROR      [c.a.plugin.parsers.XmlDescriptorParserUtils] There were problems loading the module 'dashboard-item' in plugin 'Atlassian JIRA - Plugins - Gadgets Plugin'. The module has been disabled.

2018-04-03 15:51:43,108 JIRA-Bootstrap ERROR      [c.a.plugin.parsers.XmlDescriptorParserUtils] Cannot find ModuleDescriptor class for plugin of type 'dashboard-item'.

 And this then seems to disable the plugin and jira will not start.

I have tried rolling back to a backup from before the reboot but that hasn't helped. Before the reboot we were getting an error with a dashboard gadget that was stating the baseurl was incorrect, but it looked ok to me and everything else was ok. I have tried to update the baseurl using sql to the ip address to see if there were some issue with that but it doesnt help.

[Andy Heinzer]

I think this is actually a system plugin for Jira.  If a system plugin in Jira fails to start up a number of times, this plugin can become disabled in the database.  If this happens a flag is essentially added to a specific table in the database.   Check to see if this is the case with a SQL query such as:

select * from pluginstate;

Any results here that indicate the 'pluginenabled' field has a 'false' boolean value would be a disabled plugin.  It's common to see this for user plugins that have been disabled, but I would not expect to see any system plugins in this view.  You could try to clear this table, or update any system plugins to have a true value for that field and then restart Jira.  

However many times, if this has happened, you might want to check to make sure that your Jira instance has enough memory for the size of your instance.  I would recommend comparing your instance against the Jira Sizing Guide and also looking into the increasing Jira memory guide if you need to increase the amount of memory that Jira can use.   In my experience if a system plugin is failing enough times to get this kind of flag, the most common cause tends to be that Jira is under resourced in terms of memory and CPU power during start up.