Issue Summary

Add SMTP Mail Server page becomes unresponsive / extremely slow to load on Jira DC instances with large number of projects due to per-project avatar requests overwhelming the browser.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Set up a Jira DC instance with a lot of projects (8K+ projects)
2. Ensure each project has a notification scheme assigned
3. Log in as a Jira System Administrator
4. Navigate to Administration → System → Mail → Outgoing Mail
5. Click Configure new SMTP mail server (or edit an existing one)
6. Open browser DevTools → Network tab and capture a HAR while the page loads

Expected Results

The Add/Edit SMTP Mail Server page should load within a few seconds regardless of the number of projects on the instance. The Test Connection works without any issue.

Actual Results

The AddSMTPServerConnection page takes tens of seconds to several minutes to load and it displays a blank page after some time. From the HAR, the browser seems to be issuing one /secure/projectavatar request per project (thousands of requests):

/jira/secure/projectavatar?size=small&pid=19100 

Workaround

As an interim workaround, block the /secure/projectavatar requests at the browser level (via browser DevTools "Block request URL" feature or a network-level blocker) while loading the SMTP mail server page. This prevents the thousands of avatar requests from being issued and allows the page to render normally.

• In Chrome DevTools: Network tab → right-click any /secure/projectavatar request → Block request URL, then reload the page.
• This is a client-side mitigation only and should be used by admins during page configuration; it does not require server-side changes.