Jira Data Center service won't start

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

Summary

When trying to start Jira's service, it fails with

1 2 Job for jira.service failed because the control process exited with error code. See "systemctl status jira.service" and "journalctl -xeu jira.service" for details.

Environment

Jira Data Center running in Linux

Cause

The most likely causes are a configuration mistake in the service configuration - caused, for example, by a directory change in an upgrade - or the the startup shell threw an error.

Solution

There could be several causes for this error, so this is a guideline to help find it:

  • To verify the service is set up correctly, check our example at Run Jira Server or Data Center as a systemd service on linux

    • ℹ️ The referenced commands in the error ("systemctl status jira.service" and "journalctl -xeu jira.service") might help find the configuration issue

  • Check the catalina.out log file - if the service configuration is correct, a startup script could have an error. For example:

1 /opt/vgi/jira/atlassian-jira-software-9.12.12-standalone/bin/catalina.sh: line 523: -Dfile.encoding=utf-8: command not found
    • The error above indicates that Linux is attempting to run "-Dfile.encoding=utf-8" as a command. This was caused by a line break in the JVM arguments in setenv.sh

Updated on April 7, 2025

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