User updates reverting on the UI after page refresh and/or users sporadically showing logged as someone else
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
Changes applied in the Jira UI (project role modifications, editing screens, changes in issue order in boards, recurrent websudo authentications, and other similar activities), are reverted to their previous state after submitting/refreshing the page. After some time passes, the changes previously applied are made visible.
This is mainly perceived by the person making the actual changes, other users can view the updates right after they are applied.
Another symptom of the same problem is that Jira shows that a user is sporadically shown to be logged as someone else (can be perceived through the user icon on the top right corner).
Environment
The Jira environment utilizes a Varnish Cache feature along with its Load Balancer/Proxy (often used alongside Nginx and Apache).
đź’ˇ If unsure whether Varnish is present in the environment, the diagnostics section shows an easy way to detect its presence.
Diagnosis
You've verified that the changes made to the UI are visible in the database (which means they were correctly processed by Jira).
You've also verified that session stickiness has been properly configured.
Capture a HAR file from when reproducing the behavior, and if you are facing the problem explained in this article you will be able to identify the following details:
Using the same HAR file, you can identify the presence of Varnish on the "via" identifier.
Example:
Within the HAR file, you can identify that session IDs, node IDs, and even usernames, all of which should remain static for a user session, often change in each part of the request (sometimes repeating themselves later on).
Example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47... ----------------------------------- "name": "x-anodeid", "value": "jiranode-0" "name": "x-asessionid", "value": "redzj1m" "name": "x-ausername", "value": "0pj0h8" ----------------------------------- "name": "x-anodeid", "value": "jiranode-1" "name": "x-asessionid", "value": "mlpkp8" "name": "x-ausername", "value": "0pj0h8" ----------------------------------- "name": "x-anodeid", "value": "jiranode-0" "name": "x-asessionid", "value": "oamv16" "name": "x-ausername", "value": "18mdb7" ----------------------------------- "name": "x-anodeid", "value": "jiranode-0" "name": "x-asessionid", "value": "oamv16" "name": "x-ausername", "value": "18mdb7" ----------------------------------- "name": "x-anodeid", "value": "jiranode-1" "name": "x-asessionid", "value": "mlpkp8" "name": "x-ausername", "value": "0pj0h8" ...
Cause
The use of the Varnish Cache feature in Load Balancer/Proxies may cause outdated information to be presented to users and even mix up information specific to user sessions among different users in an attempt to better the performance of the application.
These scenarios however are responsible for the apparent "reverting changes on the UI" (since the cache is presenting outdated cached information) and the sporadic session mix-ups (as the caching will deliver information about the incorrect logged-in user to the browser client).
Solution
In order to solve the problems caused by the use of Varnish, we recommend removing/disabling Varnish on your environment, as it is not properly compatible with Jira.
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