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Atlassian Jira Software Docker Installation

Jira Software is software development tracking application. It is available as

  • Jira Cloud, a managed hosted deployment
  • Jira Server, a self-managed solution.

Installing Jira Server using docker

Section titled “Installing Jira Server using docker”

Determine the docker image tag

Section titled “Determine the docker image tag”

Jira Software can be downloaded from their site and installed manually. Check the current Long Term Support (LTS) version which should be more stable than the latest release.

Corresponding docker images are published to Docker hub at atlassian/jira-software. I couldn’t find a tag for the latest LTS version, instead use a specific tag, e.g. 8.5.5.

To determine the specific Jira Software version in an image, look for a file in the image matching /opt/atlassian/jira/atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/application-installation/jira-software-application/jira-software-application-*.jar The * will contain the version number. This is useful if using a generic tag such as 8 or latest.

Pull the docker image

Section titled “Pull the docker image”
Terminal window
docker pull atlassian/jira-software:8.5.5

Create a docker volume for Jira data

Section titled “Create a docker volume for Jira data”

A docker volume stores data. It is independent of the container so will remain when the image is upgraded.

Terminal window
docker volume create --name jiraVolume

Jira will store data such as attachments here.

Jira Database

Section titled “Jira Database”

A separate database should also be started along with Jira. It is safer than the default in memory H2 database.

See postgres docker install for installing a postgres database.

Assume there is now postgreSQL instance up and running with the following details:

  • host: 10.10.10.10
  • port: 5432
  • user: jira
  • password: jira-db-secret

Run the container

Section titled “Run the container”
Terminal window
docker container run --name jira -p 8080:8080 \
-v jiraVolume:/var/atlassian/application-data/jira \
-e ATL_DB_DRIVER=org.postgresql.Driver \
-e ATL_DB_TYPE=postgres72 \
-e ATL_JDBC_URL=jdbc:postgresql://10.10.10.10:5432/jira \
-e ATL_JDBC_USER=jira \
-e ATL_JDBC_PASSWORD=jira-db-secret \
atlassian/jira-software:8.5.5
  • jiraVolume is mounted to the data directory at /var/atlassian/application-data/jira
  • ATL_DB_TYPE should be set to postgres72, even if you are using a later postgres version.

The application is now available at port 8080 of the docker host, e.g. http://localhost:8080/

A license key must be installed as part of the installation process, follow the instructions in the browser.

Debugging

Section titled “Debugging”

To look around the running container

Terminal window
docker exec -it jira bash

To see logs

Terminal window
docker logs jira

SSL Terminated reverse proxy

Section titled “SSL Terminated reverse proxy”

If required, configure the Tomcat connector to accept connections from a SSL terminated reverse proxy.

Add more environment variables to the container

-e ATL_TOMCAT_SCHEME=https \
-e ATL_TOMCAT_SECURE=true \
-e ATL_PROXY_PORT=443 \
-e ATL_PROXY_NAME=jira.example.com

References

Section titled “References”