Managing attachments in JIRA applications
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
As the number of issues grow in JIRA applications it may be required that JIRA application home directory disk space get filled up due to large number of attachments added to the issues.
The content on this page relates to platforms which are not supported. Consequently, Atlassian Support cannot guarantee providing any support for it. Please be aware that this material is provided for your information only and using it is done so at your own risk.
Cause
The drive which is hosting the JIRA application home directory is running out of free space.
Resolution
There are multiple approaches that can be taken here.
Moving the home directory
Attachments are stored under the data directory in JIRA application home directory as explained here. So in order to have attachments stored in an another directory the JIRA application home directory can be moved to a different location as explained below.
Shutdown JIRA applications
Copy the existing JIRA applications home to the new location of your choice
Run the JIRA application configuration tool to point to the new JIRA application home directory you made in the previous step.
Restart JIRA application.
Once JIRA application is running successfully using the new JIRA application home, the older directory may deleted.
Linking the attachment directory
In Linux systems it is possible to link the JIRA_HOME/data/attachments directory to another path which has sufficient disk space.
ℹ️ Do remember to copy the existing attachments to the new path while creating the link.
⚠️ Shutdown your JIRA application before making the path changes.
Archiving/Moving of older attachments
It is also possible that attachments related to older issues which are not required anymore can be moved out to a different path in a regular basis from $JIRA_HOME/data/attachments. More detailed steps about this can be found in the following article: How to archive attachments of archived projects
Please note that the JIRA application will throw an error if an attempt is made to access the attachments which are archived out.
In the newer version of Jira please be aware that modifying the custom attachment path will cause a Health Check warning:
Custom attachment paths are deprecated and won't be supported since Jira 10. To change the location of attachments, create a symbolic link for the current attachment directory.
See KB: Attachment health check shows warning message when a custom attachment page is used
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