Server is not reachable - how to fix it

Symptoms

When creating a new synchronization there is a validation error for the Base URL field: "The server '%baseUrl%' is not reachable". 

Cause

This happens (typically on Unix servers) when the networking is setup in a certain way that Java cannot handle it correctly.

As Backbone uses the HTTP(s) protocol to talk to itself and depending on your set up also to the other instance, the server must be able to resolve the Base Urls, but it can't.

Resolution

The following steps should be done in order to resolve this problem. Let's assume your server's IP address is 1.2.3.4, the JIRA server's hostname is jiraserver and the domain of the server is jira.example.com . Please replace those assumptions with your values.

1. Open the file on /etc/hosts (on Lunix) or \WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (on Windows) and check if there is a line for your IP address containing the hostname (short version and fully qualified). The line should look like

   1.2.3.4 jiraserver jira.example.com

   CODE

2. If there is a line like

   127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain jiraserver jiraserver.local jira.example.com

   CODE

   please split it into two separate lines and replace the loopback IP (127.0.0.1, ::1) with the actual IP of your server. The result should look like this:

   127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
   1.2.3.4   jiraserver jiraserver.local jira.example.com

   CODE