Summary

A Proxy Error screen will be displayed when attempting to generate an XML backup while running Jira behind a proxy.

Environment

• Any version of Jira
• Running behind reverse proxy with conservative timeout

Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to Administration > System > Backup System
2. Start a backup of the instance
3. Wait a few minutes (until the proxy timeout is reached)

Expected Results

Backup is completed with no error message.

Actual Results

User receives 504 Gateway Timeout error

Notes

This error happens because the backup procedure does not have a progress bar to indicate the state of the operation. When the backup is started, the browser keeps waiting for the backup to complete.

If the instance is fairly large, the backup will take longer than the proxy timeout configured and result in a 504 gateway timeout error. This is because there is no response from the application while the backup is being created.

Notice that the backup operation is not impacted. If you wait for its completion, the backup will be available in the export directory of the local home. However, we do not have any indication of the process state besides checking if the backup file stopped growing and is zipped in the directory above.

A possible solution would be having a progress bar to this process, as we have for the XML import procedure.

Workaround

Increasing the proxy timeout is not feasible as the backup can take hours to complete

1. The first workaround is to wait for the backup to complete by checking the backup file in the export directory. Once the file stops growing and a .zip file is created, the backup should be completed
2. The second workaround is to add a non-proxy connector to server.xml, access the site using the connector and execute the backup