XML restore fails with entityName error in Jira server

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

Your JIRA application fails to restore a XML backup and presents messages similar to the below in the atlassian-jira.log.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 2013-01-01 13:01:09,350 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 ERROR XXXXXX 781x19x1 1bk15j5 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [jira.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Error importing data: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [GenericDelegator.makeValue] could not find entity for entityName: LinkEntity java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [GenericDelegator.makeValue] could not find entity for entityName: LinkEntity at org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericDelegator.makeValue(GenericDelegator.java:430) at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor120.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at com.atlassian.multitenant.impl.MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl$AbstractMultiTenantAwareInvocationHandler.invokeInternal(MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl.java:181) at com.atlassian.multitenant.impl.MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl$MultiTenantAwareMethodInterceptor.intercept(MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl.java:230) at org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericDelegator$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$9e98ab2.makeValue(<generated>) at com.atlassian.jira.ofbiz.DefaultOfBizDelegator.makeValue(DefaultOfBizDelegator.java:385) at com.atlassian.jira.action.admin.OfbizImportHandler.startElement(OfbizImportHandler.java:176) at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(Unknown Source) (...)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 ERROR XXXXX 775x191x1 13ia0t7 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 /secure/admin/XmlRestore.jspa [jira.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Error importing data: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [GenericDelegator.makeValue] could not find entity for entityName: KPlugins java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [GenericDelegator.makeValue] could not find entity for entityName: KPlugins at org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericDelegator.makeValue(GenericDelegator.java:430) at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor285.invoke(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at com.atlassian.multitenant.impl.MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl$AbstractMultiTenantAwareInvocationHandler.invokeInternal(MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl.java:181) at com.atlassian.multitenant.impl.MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl$MultiTenantAwareMethodInterceptor.intercept(MultiTenantComponentFactoryImpl.java:230) at org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericDelegator$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$6c2a9e86.makeValue(<generated>) at com.atlassian.jira.ofbiz.DefaultOfBizDelegator.makeValue(DefaultOfBizDelegator.java:371) at com.atlassian.jira.action.admin.OfbizImportHandler.startElement(OfbizImportHandler.java:160) at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractXMLDocumentParser.emptyElement(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source) (...)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 2016-01-04 19:00:06,390 JiraImportTaskExecutionThread-1 ERROR anonymous 1140x23x1 gt55l6 192.168.10.122 /secure/SetupImport.jspa [c.a.j.bc.dataimport.DefaultDataImportService] Error importing data: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [GenericEntity.setString] "q_text" is not a field of java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: [GenericEntity.setString] "q_text" is not a field of at org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericEntity.setString(GenericEntity.java:326) at com.atlassian.jira.action.admin.OfbizImportHandler.endElement(OfbizImportHandler.java:506) at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.endElement(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanEndElement(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source) at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)

Cause

There are two possible causes for this problem.

Cause #1

The XML backup was generated from an instance which has some specific third party plugins installed that use JIRA application default entity model for data storage, which is unsupported.

Some of the plug-ins known to cause the problem are:

ℹ️These add-ons are not supported by Atlassian, therefore it's recommended to contact the vendor responsible for each in the occurrence of this problem before proceeding with any action.

Cause #2

The XML backup was generated from an application version newer than the targeted JIRA application instance.

Since different versions of JIRA applications may use different entity models, importing a backup from a newer version of a JIRA application can introduce this sort of problems, therefore it's unsupported.

Resolution

For "Cause #1"

Carefully check what plugins you had installed on the JIRA application source instance and install them all on the new application before restoring the data.

⚠️ This may require the purchase of additional licenses.

For "Cause #2"

Import the backup file into a version of JIRA applications equal to or newer than the one from where the backup was generated.

Workaround

Only for "Cause #1"

You will lose all the functionality and data provided by those third party plugins. You may also lose functionalities from other plugins we're not aware of.

If you don't intend to keep those plugins in your new JIRA application instance or if the solution provided by the vendor contacted was insufficient, you can purge all the data related to those add-ons from the XML file following the below steps.

  1. Copy your backup file and keep it in a safe place in case of you need the previous data in the future;

  2. Unzip the file and edit the entities.xml file. Remove all the following tags:

    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 TimesheetEntity TimesheetScheme Myaa ReportEntity ReportScheme LinkEntity LinkScheme WorklogExt WorklogType KPlugins KPluginsCfg cfgDefaultValue cfgLDefaultValue cfgValue cfgLValue QANDAA QANDAQ QANDAE a_text q_text jjlf_project jjlf_config jjlf_category KListenerSils JiraCapacityPlan additionalTaskDescription testexecutionhistory KRSSecurity KBlitzActions

    Note: If you're using an Unix-based operating system, you can run the below command on a terminal window.

    1 egrep -v "(QANDAA|QANDAQ|QANDAE|a_text|q_text|TimesheetEntity|TimesheetScheme|Myaa|ReportEntity|ReportScheme|LinkEntity|LinkScheme|WorklogExt|WorklogType|KPlugins|KPluginsCfg|cfgDefaultValue|cfgLDefaultValue|cfgValue|cfgLValue|jjlf_config|jjlf_project|jjlf_category|KListenerSils|JiraCapacityPlan|additionalTaskDescription|testexecutionhistory|KRSSecurity|KBlitzActions)" entities.xml > entities-purged.xml

    Additionally there is a Java file that can be used to do this, located at https://bitbucket.org/atlassianlabs/xml-purge/downloads/xml-purge-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar. Download that and run the following (this requires Java 8):

    1 java -jar xml-purge-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar entities.xml > entities-purged.xml
  3. Zip the modified entities.xml file back into a backup file;

    Note: If you're running an Unix-based operating system, you can run the below command on a terminal window.

    1 mv entities-purged.xml entities.xml ; zip -r MyBackupFile.zip entities.xml activeobjects.xml
  4. Restart the XML restore process;

Updated on April 8, 2025

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