Solution/workaround

To workaround this issue, there are two options we can look to implement.  The first is to run the decryption API mentioned above prior to running the export.  The workflow would be to run the API request (the response to the successful decryption will be “DONE”).  We would then run the System Export, migrate this export to the new server, run the System Import and can then finish after a successful import by running the encryption API.  This will generate a new artifactory.key for this migrated instance.

The second option, if decrypting is not an option, would be to manually update the artifactory.config.xml and either replace the encrypted password with plain text or remove the entire repository configuration from this config.xml file.  We would then need to add this repository back after the import if we do completely remove this repository.
To go into a bit more depth around this manual process, the passwords that we are looking for can be remote repositories that need a user/password or token to authenticate with the remote registry.  This could be another Artifactory instance or some external registry.  Below is an example configuration for a repository:

<remoteRepository>
            <key>test-remote</key>
            <type>npm</type>
            <description> (local file cache)</description>
            <notes></notes>
            <includesPattern>**/*</includesPattern>
            <excludesPattern></excludesPattern>
            <repoLayoutRef>npm-default</repoLayoutRef>
            <dockerApiVersion>V2</dockerApiVersion>
            ………………………………….
            ………………………………….            
            <blockMismatchingMimeTypes>true</blockMismatchingMimeTypes>
            <mismatchingMimeTypesOverrideList></mismatchingMimeTypesOverrideList>
            <bypassHeadRequests>false</bypassHeadRequests>
            <username>admin</username>
            <password>JE2fRswdAyuhgd2vVrevMgfoCzwHTpLu2WVP9EaZ2wJhYy87cU</password>
            <allowAnyHostAuth>false</allowAnyHostAuth>
            <socketTimeoutMillis>15000</socketTimeoutMillis>
            <enableCookieManagement>false</enableCookieManagement>
            <enableTokenAuthentication>false</enableTokenAuthentication>
            <disableProxy>false</disableProxy>
            <propagateQueryParams>false</propagateQueryParams>
            <disableUrlNormalization>false</disableUrlNormalization>
        </remoteRepository>

We can run a search on the configuration file for this “JE” as this will be the first two characters of the encrypted passwords we need to update.  After updating or removing all of these encrypted passwords, we should then be able to run the System Import to success.