Often, when an error occurs, you as the administrator will need to examine the JIRA log files to pinpoint the exact problem. Normally, in order to get access to the logs, you will need to either SSH into the server or download the file using an FTP client, and in a locked-down environment, you will have to request this via your IT team, which could lead to a long turn-around time.
In this recipe, we will look at how you can access your JIRA log files from the JIRA UI, trail its contents online, and download them directly.
For this recipe, we need to have the Home Directory Browser for JIRA add-on installed. You can download it from the following link and install it with the UPM:
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.atlassian.sysadmin.homedirectorybrowser
Perform the following steps to access the JIRA log files from the JIRA UI:
- Navigate to Administration | Add-ons | Home Directory Browser.
- Click on the log directory link to view its content.
- Click on the Live View link for the log file you want to view online, or download the file by clicking on it or its Download Zip link:
The Home Directory Browser
works by displaying the actual content of your JIRA_HOME directory inside your web browser. You can actually get access to more than just the log files. For example, you can look at JIRA's database configuration from the dbconfig.xml file and download data exports from the export directory.