Problem starting JIRA Server

[Gopal Kasat]

We are getting following message when we start the JIRA. Please help us resolve this issue

Setup: JIRA can't create a lock for your jira.home directory

Your jira.home directory /var/atlassian/application-data/jira can only be used by one running JIRA instance. This instance needs to create a lock to make sure another instance can't access the jira.home directory. Ensure JIRA has read and write access to the jira.home directory.
Review our documentation for more information on setting your JIRA home.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This is exactly what it says it is.  There is something stopping the current process from creating the lock file that tells other Jira systems that this one is already in use.

This can be because

1) the account running Jira does not have access to the directory (in which case you need to change the ownership or permissions, probably of the whole installation and the data directories because they've been set up wrong, or you've run it as the wrong user before and that user has taken ownership of parts of the system which will block other users from using it)

2) The file is already there because there is a Jira process already running.  You'll need to stop that one before you can start a new one

[Laurens Coppens]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist-I think when its option 2 the error is different and it says that there is an existing lock file, so i think your option 1 is the correct one.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yep, I tend to agree, although I have seen it give this report in case 2 a few times (I've never bothered to work out why it reports differently sometimes, just assumed it's the OS or something and got stuck into fixing it!).

Also, option 2 is the leading cause of option 1 happening!  If you've got Jira running as the wrong user, it can change the ownership of the files, including the lock file!