Summary

• When Anonymous User access a ticket in JIRA, clicking on the activity tab will result to a rendering exception error
• Is not experienced with logged-in user

Environment

• This exception will only shows if you set up SSL/HTTPS in your instance
• If no SSL/HTTPS configured, will show the following JRA-45580

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install a fresh clean server instance
2. Configure HTTPS by following this documentation
3. Create a new project and issue
4. Change the permission for the project to allow 'anyone' to browse project/administer project
5. Log out
6. Go to any of the issue from the new project
7. Click on the history/activity tab

Expected Results

Able to see the activity tab

Actual Results

• Below exception is thrown
  
  

The below exception is thrown in the atlassian-jira.log file:

2016-01-06 22:37:31,413 http-bio-8443-exec-10 ERROR anonymous 1357x729x1 kxcehs 127.0.0.1 /browse/AS-1 [c.atlassian.velocity.DefaultVelocityManager] MethodInvocationException occurred getting message body from Velocity: com.atlassian.templaterenderer.RenderingException: org.apache.velocity.exception.MethodInvocationException: Invocation of method 'getHtml' in  class com.atlassian.streams.jira.portlet.ActivityStreamIssueTab$1 threw exception com.atlassian.gadgets.GadgetParsingException: org.apache.shindig.gadgets.GadgetException: Unable to retrieve gadget xml. HTTP error 500 at viewissue/activityblock.vm[line 58, column 27]
com.atlassian.templaterenderer.RenderingException: org.apache.velocity.exception.MethodInvocationException: Invocation of method 'getHtml' in  class com.atlassian.streams.jira.portlet.ActivityStreamIssueTab$1 threw exception com.atlassian.gadgets.GadgetParsingException: org.apache.shindig.gadgets.GadgetException: Unable to retrieve gadget xml. HTTP error 500 at viewissue/activityblock.vm[line 58, column 27]

Caused by: com.atlassian.gadgets.GadgetParsingException: org.apache.shindig.gadgets.GadgetException: Unable to retrieve gadget xml. HTTP error 500

Workaround

Only workaround is to log in.

Updates 20th June 2018

New behavior is observed when setting JIRA with Apache SSL as per KB: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/integrating-jira-with-apache-using-ssl-802593043.html

1. Anonymous user access JIRA via proxy/SSL, view an issue, click on Activity Stream and same error observed.
2. Login with an internal user account, access JIRA via proxy/SSL. View the same issue and click on Activity Stream and error observed. Note that in previous scenario, once user login the error should be gone.
3. Bypass proxy and login with the same internal user account, view the same issue and now able to view the activity stream details.
4. This is reproducible with different types of proxy such as Apache and Microsoft TMG.