Troubleshooting Captcha Issues

Sometimes, a user (either real or informatically) will have trouble accessing Jira due to Captcha issues.

Informatics users will see a 404 error due to inability to log in, and “real” users will see a screen asking for a captcha at login:

The user will never be able to successfully enter this since the captcha needs to be cleared from an admin page.

The cause is not 100% known but has happened when an informatics user has tried to ping Jira many times within a second, or whenever there is a mismatch in user settings in Crowd and related applications.

How to clear from Jira UI (requires Admin access):

Log in to Jira
Upper right gear → User Management (if you do not see a gear, you do not have admin access)
Enter user name in “Filter User” field, and you should see “CAPTCHA required at next login”
Click “Reset failed login count” and have the user try again.

If the above does not solve the problem (e.g. they get another captcha trying to log in again), you’ll have to do more digging into application access and directory configurations.

In crowd → Users → find user → Check applications tab for the application (e.g. labopsjira) the user is trying to log into
- If the application is NOT there, check that the user in is in a group that is allowed to authenticate into Jira:
  - Log into Jira → upper right gear → Applications → Application access (on sidebar)
  - Check Jira Software list of groups (e.g. broad-users) and that the user is in one of these.
- If the application IS there, check that the directory/group combo the user is in is allowed to authenticate:
  - In Crowd → Applications → choose app → Directories & Groups
  - Find Directory at bottom that user is in (can be found under the Users tab; most problems are with Broad External Users) → Actions … → Configure Authentication → Check if group name user is in is listed here.