The sidebar is not loading for some (or all) Jira Data Center project(s)

Summary

The purpose of this KB article is to list the most common reasons why the project sidebar is not loading for Jira (Software or Service Management) projects.

ℹ️ In this KB article:

• JSM will refer to Jira Service Management.

• JSW will refer to Jira Software.

Environment

Jira Server/Data Center on any version from 7.0.0.

Diagnosis

• Check if only a certain type of project is impacted:

  • If only the JSM projects are impacted by this issue, and if JSM was recently upgraded, then Root Cause 5 might be relevant.

  • If any type of project is impacted, then move on to the next step.

• If the issue only occurs with Projects thathave an underscore character in the key, and the Jira version is on any version 9.2.x or 9.3.x, then Root Cause 6 might be relevant.

• If the issue only occurs with recently created projects (mostly JSM projects created with shared configuration) and if you can find the find the error below in the Jira application logs, then the Root Cause 1 or Root Cause 7 is relevant:

  2024-05-13 16:03:24,628+0000 http-nio-8080-exec-61 url: /rest/projects/1.0/sidebar/project/<SOME_PROJECT_KEY>; user: admin ERROR admin 963x10067925x21 spfgiq 127.0.0.1 /rest/projects/1.0/sidebar/project/<SOME_PROJECT_KEY> [c.a.p.r.c.error.jersey.ThrowableExceptionMapper] Uncaught exception thrown by REST service: This is a service project, but we were unable to load the Jira Service Management project context. It may be possible to fix this error by converting this project to a different project type, and then converting it back to service project. java.lang.RuntimeException: This is a service project, but we were unable to load the Jira Service Management project context. It may be possible to fix this error by converting this project to a different project type, and then converting it back to service project. at com.atlassian.servicedesk.project.internal.web.sidebar.ServiceDeskSidebarContentRendererImpl.render(ServiceDeskSidebarContentRendererImpl.java:46) at com.atlassian.jira.projects.sidebar.ProjectSidebarRendererImpl.lambda$render$0(ProjectSidebarRendererImpl.java:98) at com.atlassian.jira.projects.sidebar.SidebarRendererImpl.render(SidebarRendererImpl.java:50) at com.atlassian.jira.projects.sidebar.SidebarRendererImpl.render(SidebarRendererImpl.java:35) ... com.atlassian.servicedesk.internal.api.util.context.ReentrantThreadLocalBasedCodeContext.rteInvoke(ReentrantThreadLocalBasedCodeContext.java:136) at com.atlassian.servicedesk.internal.api.util.context.ReentrantThreadLocalBasedCodeContext.runOutOfContext(ReentrantThreadLocalBasedCodeContext.java:89) at com.atlassian.servicedesk.internal.utils.context.CustomerContextServiceImpl.runOutOfCustomerContext(CustomerContextServiceImpl.java:47) at com.atlassian.servicedesk.internal.web.CustomerContextSettingFilter.outOfCustomerContext(CustomerContextSettingFilter.java:211) at com.atlassian.servicedesk.internal.web.CustomerContextSettingFilter.doFilterImpl(CustomerContextSettingFilter.java:139) at com.atlassian.servicedesk.internal.web.CustomerContextSettingFilter.doFilter(CustomerContextSettingFilter.java:128) ... 9 filtered at com.atlassian.jwt.internal.servlet.JwtAuthFilter.doFilter(JwtAuthFilter.java:37) ... 3 filtered at com.atlassian.ratelimiting.internal.filter.RateLimitPreAuthFilter.doFilter(RateLimitPreAuthFilter.java:71) ... 3 filtered at com.atlassian.web.servlet.plugin.request.RedirectInterceptingFilter.doFilter(RedirectInterceptingFilter.java:21) ... 4 filtered at com.atlassian.troubleshooting.thready.filter.AbstractThreadNamingFilter.doFilter(AbstractThreadNamingFilter.java:46) ... 3 filtered at com.atlassian.web.servlet.plugin.LocationCleanerFilter.doFilter(LocationCleanerFilter.java:36) ... 26 filtered at com.atlassian.jira.servermetrics.MetricsCollectorFilter.doFilter(MetricsCollectorFilter.java:25) ... 25 filtered at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1191) at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:659) at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61) at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:829)

• Check if the issue gets resolved when using a different type of browser or after upgrading the browser.

  • If that's the case, the Root Cause 4 is relevant. The Brave browser and some old versions of Firefox/Edge Chrome are known to cause this issue.

• Check if the issue gets resolved after entering plugin safe mode.

  • If that's the case, then a 3rd party add-on might be causing the issue and the Root Cause 3 is relevant.

• Check if Jira is running behind a Reverse Proxy Server or Load Balancer:

  • This can usually be verified by looking at the Server header of any HTTP response sent from the browser to the Jira application.

• In the example below, Jira is running behind an IIS Proxy Server:

• • • In the other example below, Jira is running behind an AWS Load Balancee:

      Server awselb/2.0

  • Check if the issue gets resolved after bypassing the reverse proxy (or Load Balancer) the Jira application is configured with.

    • If the issue gets resolved, then the Root Cause 2 is relevant.

  • Alternatively, open the Network tab of the browser, and check if you get status codes such as the ones shown below is for some or all Atlassian Bundled JavaScripts or CSS files:

    • In the case of an IIS proxy server, the Status Code: 400 Bad Request Error might be thrown.

    • In the case of an AWS Load Balancer,Status Code: 403 net::ERR_ABORTED might be thrown.

  • Another way to confirm that this root cause is relevant is to check the Tomcat Access logs located in the directory <JIRA_INSTALL>/logs (which names have the format access_log.<date>.log):

    • If the requests that is returning an error in the browser network tab (or HAR file) cannot be found in the Tomcat Access logs, then it means that the requests never reached the Jira application.

    • In this case, it is another indication that the reverse proxy/Load balancer is causing the issue as it is blocking the URL from reaching the Jira application.

    • In this case, the Root Cause 2 is relevant.

• Open the developer tool of the Browser while replicating the issue.

  • Check the Network tab.

    • If you see that some URLs that Jira is using to load CSS or JS files are returning with the 404 error, then the Root Cause 3 and Root Cause 4 might both be relevant:

      • HTTP Request details:

        "request": { "method": "GET", "url": "<JIRA_BASE_URL>/s/9f705afb0964cd6ffe4cf92de061c7d3-CDN/wgs2q2/9120007/23vmlq/2be2611d8b6f221cd914b5780322bb04/_/download/contextbatch/css/jira.project.sidebar,-_super,-jira.general,-jira.view.issue,-jira.browse.project,-atl.general,-project.issue.navigator,-com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:sidebar-placeholder/batch.css?agile_global_admin_condition=true&baseurl-check-resources=true&healthcheck-resources=true&jag=true&jaguser=true&jira.create.linked.issue=true&richediton=true", "httpVersion": "",

      • Response:

        "response": { "status": 404, "statusText": "", "httpVersion": "", "headers": [ { "name": "cache-control", "value": "max-age=31536000,public" }, ... { "name": "x-anodeid", "value": "jira-3" }, { "name": "x-arequestid", "value": "362x11994352x6" }, { "name": "x-asessionid", "value": "17zy1rh" }, ...

  • Check the Console tab.

    • If you see that some URLs that Jira is using to load CSS or JS files are throwing the error below, then the Root Cause 3 and Root Cause 4 might both be relevant:

      Refused to apply style from '<JIRA_BASE_URL>/s/62fa5455df1bdda07b52ce8538d2dc1f-T/ks956z/940014/hgwlh3/e8a0c66a670285d4257079c4bf7a334e/_/download/contextbatch/css/jira.project.sidebar,-_super,-jira.general,-jira.view.issue,-jira.browse.project,-atl.general,-project.issue.navigator,-com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:sidebar-placeholder/batch.css?agile_global_admin_condition=true&baseurl-check-resources=true&healthcheck-resources=true&jag=true&jaguser=true&jira.create.linked.issue=true&richediton=true' because its MIME type ('text/html') is not a supported stylesheet MIME type, and strict MIME checking is enabled.

• Check the Tomcat Access logs located in the directory <JIRA_INSTALL>/logs (which names have the format access_log.<date>.log), look for the Request ID of the HTTP request that returned the 404 error in the browser's Network tab (362x11994352x6 in the examples above and below), and check if it is also returning a 404 error code. If you see this 404 error at the Tomcat level, then it is an indication that the error originated at the Jira application level and not at the browser or proxy server level. In this case, Root Cause 3 is the most probable root cause:

  127.0.0.6 362x11994352x6 - [05/Jun/2024:06:02:06 +0000] "GET /s/9f705afb0964cd6ffe4cf92de061c7d3-CDN/wgs2q2/9120007/23vmlq/2be2611d8b6f221cd914b5780322bb04/_/download/contextbatch/css/jira.project.sidebar,-_super,-jira.general,-jira.view.issue,-jira.browse.project,-atl.general,-project.issue.navigator,-com.atlassian.jira.jira-projects-plugin:sidebar-placeholder/batch.css?agile_global_admin_condition=true&baseurl-check-resources=true&healthcheck-resources=true&jag=true&jaguser=true&jira.create.linked.issue=true&richediton=true HTTP/1.1" 404 1871 5 "<JIRA_BASE_URL>/projects/ABC/issues/ABC-123?filter=allopenissues" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/125.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" "17zy1rh"

Cause

Root Cause 1 - The project creation did not complete and the project is in an unstable state (Jira bug)

Due to the bug tracked in JRASERVER-67279, some projects might fail to be properly created and end up in an inconsistent state, and the following will happen:

• The browser will time out while these projects were created.

• The project side bar will fail to load for these projects.

This bug is known to:

• Impact JSM projects more often than JSW projects.

• Happen more often when the project was created using shared configurations.

Root Cause 2 - Jira is running behind a proxy server or load balancer that is blocking some HTTP requests

Case of an IIS Proxy Server

As mentioned the KB article Pages not displaying properly when Jira Server is integrated with IIS, when the Jira application is configured to run behind an IIS Proxy Server, some pages might fail to render due to the maxurllength parameter from the IIS proxy. If this parameter is set to a too low value, some Jira URLs might be trimmed, and as a result, the Project Side bar might fail to load.

Case of any other Proxy Server/Load Balancer (LB)

Depending on the type of Prosy Server/LB that is used and how it is configured, it might block some requests sent to the Jira application (such as requests meant to load CSS or JS files). In such case, the project sidebar might fail to load.

Root Cause 3 - 3rd party add-on issue

Some 3rd party add-ons are known to prevent the Jira application from loading the Project Side bar and to trigger the 404 error code in the Browser and in the Tomcat logs:

• One example of add-on that is known to cause this issue is the Xray add-on with the version 7.5.1-j9. Upgrading this add-on will resolve the issue

• There might be other add-ons causing this issue. Xray is only 1 example

Root Cause 4 - Browser issue

The Brave Browser is known to cause some issues when the browser tries to load CSS files, as per the article Problem when CSS missing and wayback option turned on. Not being able to load all CSS files will prevent the browser from loading Project Side Bars.

Old versions of other browsers (Firefox, Edge, Chrome) might also cause this error.

Root Cause 5 - (JSM projects only) - Incorrect JSM upgrade path followed from a version below 3.0.0

If JSM was upgraded from a version below 3.0.0 directly to any version from 3.2.x without the intermediate version 3.0/3.1, JSM will end up in an unstable state. In such case, JSM features will not work, and the project side bar of all JSM projects will not load. You can find more information about this issue in the KB article Unable to render element error in navigation bar after upgrading Jira Service Management.

Root Cause 6 - The project key has an underscore character and we are hitting a Jira bug

As described in the bug ticket JRASERVER-74342, for projects with underscore in project key, the project side bar will fail to load on Jira versions 9.2.x and 9.3.x. If your Jira application is on any of these versions, it will be impacted by this bug.

Root Cause 7 - Project cache issue

If the project cache is not properly populated, we might encounter this error.

Solution

Solution for Root Cause 1

There are various ways to address this issue:

• Short Term Solution:

  • Fix the impacted project by following the steps below:

    • Navigate to Jira Administration > Projects

    • Identify the problematic project

    • Click on Edit on the right side of the page

    • Change the project type another type than the current one

    • Click Save details

    • After that, change it back to its original type by doing the same Edit project operation

• Long Term Solution:

  • To prevent the issue from happening in the future, you might consider implementing the workaround mentioned in the bug JRASERVER-67279, which consists in increasing the project creation timeout value to allow enough time to the project to be created completely

Solution for Root Cause 2

Case of an IIS Proxy Server

To fix the issue, increase the value of maxurllength parameter from the IIS proxy server, as explained in the KB article Pages not displaying properly when Jira Server is integrated with IIS.

Case of any other Proxy Server/Load Balancer (LB)

We recommend reaching out to your Proxy Server/LB administrator and have them review the configuration and logs of this server.

Solution for Root Cause 3

We recommend following the steps below:

• First, identify the problematic 3rd party add-ons by disabling each add-on 1 by 1 via the page ⚙ > Manage Apps > Manage Apps until the issue stops happening.

  • Once the issue stops happening, then it means that the last add-on that was disabled was the one causing the issue.

  • After you identified the problematic add-on, make sure to re-enable all the add-ons.

• Try to upgrade the problematic add-on that you identified and check if the problem is resolved.

• If the issue is still not resolved, then we recommend:

  • Disabling the add-on for the time being (so that the Project Side bar can be loaded).

  • Reaching out to the add-on support team after finding their listing and the link to their support portal on the Atlassian Marketplace.

Solution for Root Cause 4

The solution depends on the browser with which you are able to replicate the issue:

• If the issue only happens while using the Brave browser, we recommend using any other browser (Firefox, Chrome, Edge...).

• If the issue happens with Firefox, Chrome, Edge, we recommend upgrading these browsers to the latest version.

Solution for Root Cause 5

Follow the resolution steps from the KB article Unable to render element error in navigation bar after upgrading Jira Service Management.

Solution for Root Cause 6

Upgrade to Jira to the fixed version (9.4.0) or any higher version.

Solution for Root Cause 7

Perform a rolling restart of the Jira nodes. Renaming a project might also help clearing some caches and prevent a restart, but restarting is a more guaranteed way to make sure all relevant caches are refreshed.