JIRA Receives Error Code 503 When Trying To Authenticate Against Crowd

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Symptoms

When trying to login to JIRA using the login gadget, an error is shown in red:

The resource your_domain/jiratest/rest/gadget/1.0/login">https://your_domain/jiratest/rest/gadget/1.0/login cannot be found

In JIRA's log file, the following message is reported:

1 2 Server returned error code = 503 for URI : http://your_domain:8095/crowd/services/SecurityServer

Cause

Proxy configurations (-Dhttp.httpProxy and/or -Dhttp.nonProxyHosts) were added to the JIRA JAVA_OPTS variable, blocking JIRA's access to Crowd.

Resolution

Many different combinations can be used in the JAVA_OPTS variable. First, ensure that JIRA can access Crowd when the proxy configurations are not added to JAVA. Then, provide the correct configuration that would allow JIRA to access Crowd with or without a proxy. For more information, please see the JAVA Networking Properties documentation.

Updated on April 8, 2025

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