Jira Administration - Custom Fields & Screens

Jira has a complex administration concepts. Performing Jira admin tasks without understanding the complete flow leads to mistakes. In this post, I'm explaining how the Custom Fields are created and how to link it to project screens.

Creating custom fields
Let's assume you get a request to create a custom field "Severity". Check whether this custom field is already existing by

• Login to Jira -> Administration -> Issue Fields -> Custom Fields

If it is not available, create it straight away

• Login to Jira -> Administration -> Issue Fields -> Custom Fields -> Add custom Field -> Choose the field type -> Provide field name, search template, etc , applicable issue types, Applicable context.

   Custom Field Context

        The custom field which we created can be associated to all issues by selecting "Global context" or to specific projects. Depending on the usability of the custom field make it either global or project specific.

If the custom field is already exist, then try to reuse it.

Screens

Screens group multiple issue fields. Using Screens, you can control which fields are displayed. You can also split fields on a Screen into multiple tabs.

Issue: Nexus is too slow in downloading pom files

Recently our nexus open source [1.5] version became too slow in downloading .pom files. It worked well for years, but it starting taking more than 2 mins to download a .pom file of size 422 Bytes. But it used download few files faster. Manually we could have downloaded the same file either using browser, wget or curl in fractions of seconds. But artifact download through maven got affected badly.

We new the changes happened in our network. Our nexus host machine got moved to a restricted network, where access to internet was blocked. Finally we nailed down the issue is either maven/nexus is trying to contact external public repositories for updates for each download and slowing down things.


Issue resolution: Re-order group repositories.

By default with nexus installation, we had “Maven central” in top of public repositories.

Since Maven central is blocked in our network, nexus got slowed down.

Now I put our own hosted repositories on top of the “Ordered Group repositories”.

Now every search for artifact is getting matched in our local repository, instead of going external network and hence download got faster now.


Login to Nexus -> Public Repositories -> 

ssh command run from Jenkins shell will take “/” as home directory

Issue:

ssh command run from Jenkins shell will take “/” as home directory and hence it tries to look for all the files in that directory like “/.ssh/known_hosts” & /.ssh/id_rsa. It typically happens in Windows cygwin shell

Environment:

 Jenkins 

 Windows Slave

 Cygwin

 ssh

Error:    

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /.ssh/known_hosts

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh_known_hosts

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /.ssh/known_hosts

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh_known_hosts

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /.ssh/known_hosts

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh_known_hosts

debug2: no key of type 0 for host library-blr.ap.rsa.net

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /.ssh/known_hosts2

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh_known_hosts2

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /.ssh/known_hosts

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh_known_hosts

debug2: no key of type 2 for host library-blr.ap.rsa.net

Build was aborted

Fix:

1) Run Jenkins service as “Administrator”. By default it will be running  as "Local user"
              Start -> run -> services.msc -> Jenkins Slave -> Right click -> Properties -> Log on -> This account ->

           Give Administrator & password.

       

       Then in  jenkins -> manage nodes -> Select your machine -> Disconnect -> Then reconnect.

       Make sure the slave is launched as "Windows service"

        The above step should fix the issue.

     Note: Step 2 is optional. 

2) Run Cygwin-sshd as “Administrator.  By default it will be running  as “cyg_server”

Jenkins upgrade > 1.444
If you upgrade jenkins to latest versions, again ssh commands through windows will hang for the same reason mentioned above.
The fix is not to run Jenkins service as 'Local user'. Now you can configure it through jenkins node configuration page.
Login to jenkins -> Manage Jenkins -> Manage Nodes -> Click on your node -> configure -> Run service as -> select 'Log on using a different account' ->
For ex: 
User name:   .\Administrator  
pasword:  ********

Note:  .\  in user name is must , otherwise it fails with 
ERROR: Failed to create a service: Status Invalid Service Account

Thats it !!