Now that you have a good understanding of the overall architecture of JIRA, the basic system requirements, and the various installation options, we are ready to deploy our own JIRA instances.
In the following exercise, we will be installing and configuring a fresh JIRA instance that will be ready for a small production team. We will be performing our installation on a Windows platform with a MySQL database server. If you are planning to use a different platform or database, please refer to the vendor documentation on installing the required software for your platform.
In this exercise, you will:
We will continue to use this JIRA instance in our subsequent chapters and exercises as we build up our help desk implementation.
For our deployment, we will be using the following:
Since we will be using the installer package with Java bundled, you can skip this section. If you are using the ZIP archive or WAR distribution, you need to make sure you have Java installed on your system.
JIRA 6 requires Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 7 or a newer run. You can verify the version of Java you have by running the following command in a Command Prompt:
java -version
The preceding command tells us which version of Java is running on your system as shown in the following screenshot:
If you do not see a similar output, then chances are you do not have Java installed. You will need to perform the following steps to set up your Java environment:
To install JDK on your system, simply perform the following steps:
JAVA_HOME
for the rest of the book.JAVA_HOME
with the value set to the full path of where you installed Java. You can do this as follows:;%JAVA_HOME%in
java -version
This will display the version of Java installed if everything is done correctly. In Windows, you have to start a new command prompt after you have added the environment variable to see the change.
The next step is to prepare an enterprise database for your JIRA installation. JIRA requires a fresh database. If during the installation process, JIRA detects that the target database already contains any data, it will not proceed. If you already have a database system installed, then you may skip this section.
To install MySQL, simply perform the following steps:
root
. Do not lose this password, as we will be using it in the next section.Now that you have MySQL installed, you need to first create a user for JIRA to connect MySQL with, and then create a fresh database for JIRA to store all its data:
create database jiradb character set utf8;
jiradb
. You can name the database anything you like. As you will see later in this chapter, this name will be referenced when you connect JIRA to MySQL. We have also set the database to use UTF-8 character encoding, as this is a requirement for JIRA. You need to ensure that the database uses the InnoDB storage engine to avoid data corruption, by using the following command:grant all on jiradb.* to 'jirauser'@'localhost' identified by 'jirauser';
jirauser
and assign the password jirauser
to him. You should change the username and password to something else.jiradb
database that we just created so that the user can perform database operations, such as create/drop tables and insert/delete data. If you have named your database something other than jiradb
in step 5, then make sure you change the command so that it uses your database name.quit;
mysql –u jirauser –p
jirauser
.show databases;
jiradb
among the list of databases.jiradb
database by issuing the following commands:use jiradb; show tables;
jiradb
database, so all of your subsequent commands will be executed against the correct database.jiradb
database. Right now, the list should be empty, since tables have been created for JIRA, but don't worry— as soon as we connect to JIRA, all the tables will automatically be created.With the Java environment and database prepared, you can now move on to installing JIRA. Normally, there are only two steps:
The first step is to download the latest stable release of JIRA. You can download Atlassian JIRA from http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/download.
The Atlassian website will detect the operating system you are using and automatically suggest the installation package for you to download. If you intend to install JIRA on a different operating system than the one you are currently on, make sure you select the correct operating system package.
As mentioned earlier, with Windows, there is a Windows installer package and a self-extracting ZIP package. For the purpose of this exercise, we will use the installer package (Windows 64-bit Installer):
JIRA_INSTALL
directory. Click the Next button to continue.JIRA_HOME
directory. Click the Next button to continue.JIRA does not come bundled with the MySQL database driver, so we have to install it manually. You can download the required driver from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/. Once downloaded, you can install the driver by copying the driver jar file into the JIRA_INSTALL/lib
directory. After that, you need to restart JIRA. If you have installed JIRA as a Windows service in step 9, please see the Starting and stopping JIRA section.
JIRA comes with an easy-to-use setup wizard that will walk you through the installation and configuration process in six simple steps. You will be able to configure the database connections, default language, and much more. You can access the wizard by opening http://localhost:<port number>
in your browser, where the <port number>
is the number you have assigned to JIRA in step 6 of the installation.
In the first step of the wizard, you will be asked to select Server Language and what database JIRA should connect to.
The server language will determine what language will be used when users access JIRA. You will see that as soon as you make a change from the drop-down list, JIRA will automatically change its onscreen text to the selected language.
The database connection setting will determine what database JIRA will use. If you select the Built In option, JIRA will use its bundled in-memory database, which is good for evaluation purposes. If you want to use a proper database, such as in our case, you should select the My Own Database option.
After you have selected the My Own Database option, the wizard will expand for you to provide the database connection details. If you do not have the necessary database driver installed, JIRA will prompt you for it, as shown in the preceding screenshot.
Once you have filled in the details for your database, it is a good idea to first click on the Test Connection button to verify that JIRA is able to connect to the database. If everything is set up correctly, JIRA will report back with a success message. You should be able to move onto the next step by clicking the Next button. This may take a few minutes, as JIRA will now create all the necessary database objects. Once this is done, you will be taken to step 2 of the wizard.
In the second step, you will need to provide some basic details about this JIRA instance. Once you have filled in the required properties, click on Next to move on to step 3 of the wizard.
In the third step, you need to select whether you want to install only JIRA, or if you would like to install additional add-ons. In this example, we will be installing JIRA only, so select the I'm using JIRA for project tracking option and click on Next. You can install these additional add-ons later.
In the fourth step, we need to provide a license key for JIRA. If you have already obtained a license from Atlassian, you can select I have a JIRA key option. Then cut and paste it into the License Key text box. If you do not have a license, you can generate an evaluation license by selecting either I have an account but no key option if you have an account on https://my.atlassian.com, or by selecting I don't have an account to register a new account with Atlassian. Evaluation license will grant you access to JIRA's full set of features for one month.
In the fifth step, you will be setting up the administrator account for JIRA. It is important that you keep the account details somewhere safe and do not lose the password. Since JIRA only stores the hashed value of the password instead of the actual password itself, you will not be able to retrieve it. However, there are methods for you to reset the password if you do lose it, as we will see in Chapter 10, JIRA Service Desk. Fill in the administrator account details and click on Next to move on to the last step.
In the sixth and final step, you can set up your e-mail server details. JIRA will use the information configured here to send out notification e-mails. Notification is a very powerful feature in JIRA and one of the primary methods for JIRA to communicate with the users. If you do not have your e-mail server information handy, you can skip this step now by selecting the Later option and clicking on Finish. You can configure your e-mail server settings later, as you will see in Chapter 7, E-mails and Notifications.
Congratulations! You have successfully completed your JIRA setup, and you will be taken directly to your new JIRA instance.
Since JIRA is installed as a Windows service, you can start, stop, and restart it via the Windows services console, by navigating to Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services. In the services console, look for Atlassian JIRA, and you will be able to stop and start the application, as shown in the following screenshot:
18.225.55.151