How to add accounts to Jenkins without the web interface? - jenkins

Question

I want to automate the entire installation of Jenkins, given a list of user names I want to be able to create user accounts for each. The only method I've read to set up user accounts is here:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Standard+Security+Setup
Tried seeing if there was an option to configure with command line at:
https://localhost:8080/cli/
But does not seem to the be case.
Is it possible to add user accounts without using the web interface? More specifically a method that is scriptable.
My last resort is to do raw post requests but hoping there is a nicer way.

Answer 1

Yes of course, it is possible to script provisioning for jenkins. But not with the cli tool alone.
I guess you want to use "Jenkins own user database" with Project Matrix Authorization Strategy.
Steps to prepare provisioning:
Configure your Jenkins manually (enable security, add rolls and at least one user)
Shutdown your jenkins (to let him write all in-memory changes to disk)
Copy $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml to your provisioning script (as as seed data)
Copy $JENKINS_HOME/users/ (as seed data)
Get the cli tool: cd /tmp; wget -nv http://localhost:8080/jnlpJars/jenkins-cli.jar
If you do not want to have static seed data (one config.xml for each user) you can generate a (users/username/)config.xml using a bash script or a more advanced tool. But for simplicity sake you can take users/username1/config.xml as a template. Replace relevant data with a placeholder e.g. "PLACEHOLDER_FULLNAME" for full user name.
e.g.:
change
"<fullName>sample full username</fullName>"
to
"<fullName>PLACEHOLDER_FULLNAME</fullName>"
In your provisioning script, iterate over all users. For each user, replace each placeholder with the correct value.
e.g.
cp $SEED_DATA/templates/user/config.xml /tmp/config.xml
sed -e "s/\${PLACEHOLDER_USERNAME}/1/" -e "s/\${ChuckNorris}/dog/" /tmp/config.xml
sed -e "s/\${PLACEHOLDER_EMAIL}/1/" -e "s/\${he#findsyou.com}/dog/" /tmp/config.xml
...
mkdir -p $SEED_DATA/users/$USERNAME/
cp /tmp/config.xml $SEED_DATA/users/$USERNAME/config.xml
When you want to use generated users config.xml please generate for each user some permission settings in $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml:
<authorizationStrategy class="hudson.security.ProjectMatrixAuthorizationStrategy">
...
<permission>hudson.model.View.Create:username1</permission>
<permission>hudson.model.View.Delete:username1</permission>
<permission>hudson.model.View.Read:username1</permission>
...
<permission>hudson.model.View.Create:username2</permission>
<permission>hudson.model.View.Delete:username2</permission>
<permission>hudson.model.View.Read:username2</permission>
...
</authorizationStrategy>
Provisioning steps:
Install jenkins as you did before & maybe dynamic config generator (see above)
cp $SEED_DATA/config.xml $JENKINS_HOME/
cp -R $SEED_DATA/users/ $JENKINS_HOME/
chown -R "jenkins:jenkins" $JENKINS_HOME/users/ (maybe optional)
cd /tmp; java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -s http://localhost:8080/ reload-configuration