Mail Server Names Not Displayed in "Incoming Mail" Configuration (Jira Data Center)

[David Schneider]

Since upgrading to Jira Data Center version 10, the mail server names and hostnames are no longer displayed under:

Administration → System → Incoming Mail

Instead of the actual values, the UI renders the following placeholders:

$esc.html($server.name)
$esc.html($server.hostname)

This issue did not occur before the upgrade and appears to be related to how the UI processes and renders the mail server configuration. 

Important note: We have not made any changes to the Velocity templates or any other frontend-related files.

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Steps Taken So Far

To troubleshoot the issue, we performed the following actions:

1. Cleared plugin and temp caches:

   • <jira-home>/plugins/.bundled-plugins
   • <jira-home>/plugins/.osgi-plugins
   • <jira-install>/tmp 

2. Activated Safe Mode to rule out plugin conflicts.

3. Performed a full re-index of the instance.

After these steps, the issue was temporarily resolved for approximately one day.

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Current Behavior

The problem reappeared today during configuration changes to the mail server. The placeholders are now shown again instead of the actual mail server names and hostnames.

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Impact

This issue prevents us from properly verifying and managing mail server configurations via the UI. Since we rely on email for issue creation and commenting, this is a critical functionality for our operations.

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Request for Support

We would appreciate your assistance with the following:

• Are there any workarounds or patches available?
• Could this be related to Velocity template rendering, plugin conflicts, or permission issues?

Additional info:

• Jira Data Center version: 10.7.1
• Issue persists across different sessions

Please advise on how to resolve this issue or if a patch is available

A screenshot is attached for reference.

[Hari Krishna]

Hi @David Schneider 

This issue looks related to Velocity template rendering in Jira Data Center 10.7.1.

The placeholders like $esc.html($server.name) usually appear when Jira fails to render field values due to escaping or backend data issues.

 Steps to identify the root cause:

1. Run the SQL to check if the mail server names or hostnames contain special characters:
SELECT name, hostname FROM mailserver;

→ Remove or clean any values with <, >, &, $ etc.

2. Enable debug logging for Velocity to trace rendering issues:
log4j.logger.com.atlassian.velocity=DEBUG

3. Check if any Velocity escaping settings were modified in velocity.properties (if applicable).

Check if `velocity.properties` has escape settings like `directive.set.escapehtml = true`; incorrect or custom values may cause rendering issues.

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If the data looks clean and no customization was done, this could be a rendering bug introduced in 10.7.1. Recommend raising a support ticket with logs and a screenshot.

Hope this helps in narrowing down the actual cause!