Jira 5 migration error (Unable to find ActiveObjects plugin)

[David Legg]

I'm trying to migrate a Jira 4.3.1 WAR/EAR instance to Jira 5.0.3 WAR on a new server with a different OS (Ubuntu Server 64bit 12.04). I use SSH to control the new server.

After a few false starts I've reached the point at which the Jira Setup web page is asking for the filename of the XML file exported from the previous server. However, whether I give the correct filename or not when I click the import button I always get the red error box at the top of the page saying: -

Unable to find ActiveObjects plugin. The plugin must be enabled for the restore to work.

If I forget about trying to import old data and proceed to setup a new installation everything is fine and I don't get this error which kind of implies the ActiveObjects plugin that comes with Jira 5 is fine.

I noticed a previous question which mentioned the same error message when using Jira 4.4.4 but the solution suggested was to use Java 1.6 instead of Java 1.7. However in this case Ubuntu 12.04 installs Sun Java 1.6 by default so that is already being used.

[David Legg · Accepted solution]

Thanks Harry. Installing the bundle with Tomcat 6 worked fine.

It looks like Tomcat 7 is fine if you are installing on a new system... it just won't let you import your data from an older JIRA instance.

The main reasons I wanted to use Tomcat 7 were because: -

1. It is the default Tomcat version installed by Ubuntu 12.04

2. Getting Jira to work on port 80 as a non-root user is simple and doesn't involve installing httpd or changing iptables. Some people in the office have to fiddle with their browser proxy settings when trying to access local web servers that aren't on port 80.

[David Legg]

Ok so it has been a few weeks since I last looked at this issue. Since then version 5.1.1 has been released so I decided to try an upgrade to that... no joy I'm afraid exactly the same issue when I try to import the xml file.

I was particularly careful to ensure all the duplicate jar files were removed this time too.

Will keep you posted.

[David Legg]

Ok, I'm going to admit defeat on this issue.

I think the root cause is that I'm using Tomcat 7 which is not supported. I thought that since I successfully ran Jira 4.3 on Tomcat 7 it would be ok but it looks like that isn't the case.

I considered that maybe one of the two plugins manually installed on the old server were the cause as I'd forgotten to pre-install those on the new server. Alas, installing them made no difference.

I think that the heart of the problem is that the import function depends on a class that isn't present. All the plugins load within the 60 seconds allotted except for this one: -

Timeout occurred before finding service dependencies for

[NonValidatingOsgiBundleXmlApplicationContext(bundle=com.atlassian.streams.thirdparty-plugin,config=osgibundle:/META-INF/spring/*.xml)]
2012-08-02 16:44:13,162 Timer-1 ERROR [internal.dependencies.startup.DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor]

Unable to create application context for [com.atlassian.streams.thirdparty-plugin], unsatisfied dependencies:

Dependency on [(objectClass=com.atlassian.activeobjects.external.ActiveObjects)] (from bean [&ao])

This seems to lead to the ActiveObjects plugin being disabled (and since it is a system plugin I can't enable it): -

ActiveObjects Plugin - OSGi Bundle : com.atlassian.activeobjects.activeobjects-plugin
Version : 0.19.7
Status : disabled
Vendor : Atlassian
Description : An OSGi bundle that provides a service that allows plugins to persist objects using the ActiveObjects framework

So now, reluctantly, I will install the bundle which includes Tomcat 6.

[Harry Chan]

We've tried installing with Tomcat 7 too. It's definitely a no go. Fails completely. I'd stay away from anything that's not supported most of the time.

[David Legg]

Thanks for responses: -

@ Norman: I have since contacted support who suggested http://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=283641257 might be the cause. I checked this but it didn't solve my problem.

@tecken: Thanks for the suggestion. I did try changing the MySQL password to only use alphanumeric chars but it made no difference.

I've been too busy recently to do anything further but my next step will be to double check that I don't have duplicate jars in the classpath because I noticed some warnings in the logs about this. I'll update this post with the result.

[Teck-En]

Active Object plugin would be bundled with JIRA 5.0.x. Did you used any special characters in your database password?

[Norman Abramovitz]

I would contact support on this issue since the active objects plugin should be active, but it is not based upon the error message.

https://developer.atlassian.com/display/AO/Installing+Active+Objects