Hey everyone, I’m dealing with a situation where our testing Jira environment hasn’t been refreshed for quite a while. The issues and data in there are really old now and not useful for testing purposes anymore. Our main infrastructure runs on Windows servers, but the Jira installation is hosted on a Linux machine. I’ve been able to connect through SSH to the server, but I’m not sure what steps to take next. I’ve been searching for documentation or tutorials that show the actual command line steps needed to update or sync the test environment with production data, but haven’t found anything comprehensive. Has anyone done this before and can point me in the right direction? Any help would be appreciated!
Database restore works, but if you want to keep test-specific configs, use Jira’s backup feature instead of raw database dumps. Go to Administration > System > Backup System in prod to create a proper backup file - it preserves all application settings correctly. Make sure both instances run the same Jira version first. Version mismatches will kill the restore (learned that one the hard way with a newer backup on an older test instance). Just remember the restore wipes everything on your test instance, so document any custom test configs you’ll need to rebuild.
Had this exact problem 6 months ago - our test instance was completely out of sync too. Skip the command line sync stuff, it’s unreliable. Just do a full database restore from prod to test instead. Here’s what worked: dump your prod Jira database, then restore it to test. Stop Jira first, backup your current test DB (just in case), then restore the prod dump. Don’t forget to update base URLs and email configs afterward - you don’t want test sending notifications to real users. Took about 2 hours total including downtime, but we got a perfectly synced test environment. Just give your team a heads up since test will be down during the restore.
you can also use jira’s export/import tools if a full db restore isn’t possible. export your projects from prod as xml, then import them to test. it’s slower but gives you more control over what syncs. just a heads up - custom field mappings sometimes break during import and you’ll need to fix them manually.