After upgrading JIRA to 3.4 from a version before 3.2 you get a null pointer exception when trying to create an issue. The problem is that an upgrade task tries to add the comment field to the create issue screen. The comment field is not meant to be placeable on any user configurable screens at this time. The easy fix is to remove the Comment field from all screen configurations, via the Administration > Screens > Configure UI. This will restore JIRA to normal working order. The problem with the upgrade task has been fixed for JIRA 3.4.1. There is another problem which is that the view of non-default field configurations shows that the comment field is required when in reality it is not. This is a small bug in the jsp. I have attached the corrected jsp to this issue. If you replace the configurefieldlayout.jsp in your JIRA installation with the attached file, this bug will go away. Again, this fix is included in JIRA 3.4.1.