I want to configure Jenkins to build my code on 1 server. Then want to deploy it on another server using Jenkins.Both servers are using Linux I want to automate the entire process as much as possible. I went through some of plugins like pipeline, Job Import Plugin, etc
Can anyone guide me how to go about it ? Which plugins will be useful ? Any example or tutorial somewhere will be useful. The configuration of build pipeline plugin on jenkins was not seamless for me.
Thanks,
Bhargav
I would work it this way :
Install jenkins on your first server
Install the following plugins : ssh credentials, ssh slaves, copy to
slave, and restart jenkins
Go to Manage jenkins -> Manage credentials, and add ssh credentials
for your second server
Go to Manage jenkins -> Manage nodes, and create a passive slave.
The launch method should be "Launch slave agents on Unix machines
via ssh". You should use the credentials that you have added in step
3
Create a job to build your code. In the advanded options of job, you
should indicate that the job must only be built on master node.
Create a job to deploy your code on the second server. In the
avanded options of job, you should indicate that the job must only
be built on slave node.
In the "Build Environment" section, check the "Copy files into workspace before building" box and configure what files you want to copy from first server (https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Copy+To+Slave+Plugin)
The code will be copied into the jenkins slave's workspace.
Related
I have a local Jenkins server running on one of my spare computers (win10). Note that it is not behind any sort of a server and hence is only available within my local network. I have set it up so that it does the continuous fetch from my remote git repo and builds the artifacts and archives them for a successful build. I would like to publish these archives to my AzureDevops Release pipeline. How do I do this? (And yes I have looked through all the tutorials but they assume that I have Jenkins running on a VM somewhere on the cloud).
So far I have had no luck with the tutorials on the web since I donot really have a URL to this instance of Jenkins since it is only available on my local network. I cannot really build these artifacts on a remote Jenkins server, so I am really restricted to using this solution for running the builds.
I am looking to have these archives that Jenkins builds be directly available within my Azure DevOps release pipeline, on every successful build. Thanks for the help!
So since nobody else has answered this I am going to detail what I ended up doing (maybe not the best of the approaches but it works for my setup, suggestions are welcome!).
To interface with the Azure DevOps platform from a local machine you will need to configure a self-hosted agent (based on your specific OS), which will allow you to trigger builds, archive and upload the build artifacts to the Azure DevOps platform. This way you also donot have to poll for SCM changes too (which I think is not that elegant sometimes).
1. So you will need to go through the setup as outlined here for you local self-hosted agent:
Windows: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/v2-windows?view=azure-devops
Linux: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/v2-linux?view=azure-devops
MacOS: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/v2-osx?view=azure-devops
NOTE: I have chosen to run the agent as service on windows for my setup
2. Next setup your Jenkins build job how you normally would, with your usual repo access setup. Things to keep in mind are following:
Under "Build Triggers", select the Poll SCM option, but make sure that the schedule is blank, this will make sure that the trigger from your post-commit hook from the agent works. Example setup shown below:
Under "Post-build Actions", make sure that you are archiving the artifacts as required. Example shown below:
3. Now time to setup your project's "Jenkins Service Connection", this can be accessed from the Project Settings tab on the bottom left of you project view in Azure DevOps. Note that this basically helps you self-hosted agent to locate and communicate with the Jenkins instance running locally (or an other network accessible location!). Go under Pipelines -> Service Connections and a new service connection for Jenkins. Note that the trick here is to use the URL for the connection as seen by you local self-hosted agent, which means it can be just any IP (including localhost) that the agent can access normally. Username and password are the same as the ones you setup in Jenkins. Example shown below:
NOTE: You can try to do "Verify and Save" but it will throw an error, so ignore the error or just go ahead and "Save without verification". Also you will have to do this per project, unlike the self-hosted agent setup which is per machine.
4. Now you just need to configure your build pipeline to give jobs to the right agent and pointing to the right service end-point. Now under you build pipeline settings use the agent pool that has the self-hosted agent(s) which can access your build servers. And choose the Jenkins connection that you just created in the above step. The rest of the setup is identical to how you would normally setup your project's build pipeline. An example would be as follows:
NOTE: The key here is the correct "Job name" (this should be the same as the one you have setup in you Jenkins build server instance) and the correct "Jenkins service connection".
5. The rest is straight forward in the sense that you just now need to make sure that you have a step to "Download artifacts" (NOT necessary if you donot want the artifacts on the DevOps platform) & "Publish Artifacts" (this is needed for your release pipeline to see that build artifact and to trigger it too if you want), after your jenkins queue job step. Make sure to setup the correct job directories for download from you local self-hosted agent. Example setup for both the steps:
NOTE: If you are having trouble with the paths for download and publish refer to this link for predefined variables for the self-hosted agents: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/build/variables?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml
6. Now in your release pipeline you should be able to add the artifact sources from you build pipeline. Example shown below:
Now you should be able to get the local artifacts in the cloud on the Azure DevOps platform, in case you cannot use the build agents provided by Microsoft for any reason!
I would like to set up jenkins server that would run test scripts based on successful build deployments on other Jenkins servers. for example, if the QA jenkins server is named JQA1OnMachine1 and i have three others that are named
J2OnMachine2, J3OnMachine3, J4OnMachine4 (different jenkins server on different boxes) can the JQA1OnMachine1 (QA jenkis) poll the others at regular interval to see if a build was deployed successfully? if so can anyone tell me how?
Jenkins master slave along with Jenkins Pipeline Plugin would be one of the better ways to implement this however, since you don't want to use that approach you can explore PSTools to remotely capture processes or files on different server.
Your builds may update a file on the build server post completion of the build and your QA machine can run script with PSTools to monitor and trigger the QA testing based on the file content
I have an project to upgrade my jenkins. So the problem is I use jenkins plugins called "Publish over ssh". As I read that plugin can publish our artifactory file to another server by ssh connection. But in the configuration it always run after our job finised. So every jobs that I run, always publish to server.
So, I want to ask, how can I pick which build history artifacts that I want to publish? and it can publish when I want to publish. And then I have an Idea to adding button in jenkins web interface, to trigger adding job configuration, build it, and publish it over SSH. But, I don't know how to modify jenkins web interface. My server use tomcat, that run java ".war" file.
So, do you all have suggestion for my problem, how to modify jenkins web interface, or how to pick certain build artifacts?
Thanks...
I'm new to Jenkins, and I like to know if it is possible to have one Jenkins server to deploy / update code on multiple web servers.
Currently, I have two web servers, which are using python Fabric for deployment.
Any good tutorials, will be greatly welcomed.
One solution could be to declare your web servers as slave nodes.
First thing, give jenkins credentials to your servers (login/password or ssh login+private key or certificate. This can be configured in the "Manage credentials" menu
Then configure the slave nodes. Read the doc
Then, create a multi-configuration job. First you have to install the matrix-project plugin. This will allow you to send the same deployment intructions to both your servers at once
Since you are already using Fabic for deployment, I would suggest installing Fabric on the Jenkins master and have Jenkins kick off the Fabric commands to deploy to the remote servers. You could set up the hostnames or IPs of the remote servers as parameters to the build and just have shell commands that iterate over them and run the Fabric commands. You can take this a step further and have the same job deploy to dev/test/prod just by using a different set of hosts.
I would not make the webservers slave nodes. Reserve slave nodes for build jobs. For example, if you need to build a windows application, you will need a windows Jenkins slave. IF you have a problem with installing Fabric on your Jenkins master, you could create a slave node that is responsible for running Fabric deploys and force anything that runs a fabric command to use that slave. I feel like this is overly complex but if you have a ton of builds on your master, you might want to go this route.
I am currently using Jenkins on my development PC. I installed it on my development PC, because I had limited knowledge on this tool; so I tested on it in my development PC. Now, I feel comfortable with Jenkins as my long term "partner" in the build process and would like to "move" this Jenkins to a dedicated server.
Before this I have done few builds and have the artifacts archived from each build. In particular, the build number is very important to me for version control.
How can I export all the Jenkins information from my current PC to my new server?
Following the Jenkins wiki, you'll have to:
Install a fresh Jenkins instance on the new server
Be sure the old and the new Jenkins instances are stopped
Archive all the content of the JENKINS_HOME of the old Jenkins instance
Extract the archive into the new JENKINS_HOME directory
Do not forget to change the owner of the new Jenkins files : chown -R jenkins:jenkins $JENKINS_HOME
Launch the new Jenkins instance
Do not forget to change documentation/links to your new instance of Jenkins :)
JENKINS_HOME is by default located in ~/.jenkins on a Linux installation, yet to exactly find where it is located, go on the http://your_jenkins_url/configure page and check the value of the first parameter: Home directory; this is the JENKINS_HOME.
In case your JENKINS_HOME directory is too large to copy, and all you need is to set up same jobs, Jenkins Plugins and Jenkins configurations (and don't need old Job artifacts and reports), then you can use the ThinBackup Plugin:
Install ThinBackup on both the source and the target Jenkins servers
Configure the backup directory on both (in Manage Jenkins → ThinBackup → Settings)
On the source Jenkins, go to ThinBackup → Backup Now
Copy from Jenkins source backup directory to the Jenkins target backup directory
On the target Jenkins, go to ThinBackup → Restore, and then restart the Jenkins service.
If some plugins or jobs are missing, copy the backup content directly to the target JENKINS_HOME.
If you had user authentication on the source Jenkins, and now locked out on the target Jenkins, then edit Jenkins config.xml, set <useSecurity> to false, and restart Jenkins.
This worked for me to move from Ubuntu 12.04 (Jenkins ver. 1.628) to Ubuntu 16.04 (Jenkins ver. 1.651.2). I first installed Jenkins from the repositories.
Stop both Jenkins servers
Copy JENKINS_HOME (e.g. /var/lib/jenkins) from the old server to the new one. From a console in the new server:
rsync -av username#old-server-IP:/var/lib/jenkins/ /var/lib/jenkins/
Start your new Jenkins server
You might not need this, but I had to
Manage Jenkins and Reload Configuration from Disk.
Disconnect and connect all the nodes again.
Check that in the Configure System > Jenkins Location, the Jenkins URL is correctly assigned to the new Jenkins server.
Jenkins Server Automation:
Step 1:
Set up a repository to store the Jenkins home (jobs, configurations, plugins, etc.) in a GitLab local or on GitHub private repository and keep it updated regularly by pushing any new changes to Jenkins jobs, plugins, etc.
Step 2:
Configure a Puppet host-group/role for Jenkins that can be used to spin up new Jenkins servers. Do all the basic configuration in a Puppet recipe and make sure it installs the latest version of Jenkins and sets up a separate directory/mount for JENKINS_HOME.
Step 3:
Spin up a new machine using the Jenkins-puppet configuration above. When everything is installed, grab/clone the Jenkins configuration from the Git repository to the Jenkins home direcotry and restart Jenkins.
Step 4:
Go to the Jenkins URL, Manage Jenkins → Manage Plugins and update all the plugins that require an update.
Done
You can use Docker Swarm or Kubernetes to auto-scale the slave nodes.
Sometimes we may not have access to a Jenkins machine to copy a folder directly into another Jenkins instance. So I wrote a menu driven utility which uses Jenkins REST API calls to install plugins and jobs from one Jenkins instance to another.
For plugin migration:
GET request: {SOURCE_JENKINS_SERVER}/pluginManager/api/json?depth=1 will get you the list of plugins installed with their version.
You can send a POST request with the following parameters to install these plugins.
final_url=`{DESTINATION_JENKINS_SERVER}/pluginManager/installNecessaryPlugins`
data=`<jenkins><install plugin="{PLUGIN_NAME}#latest"/></jenkins>` (where, latest will fetch the latest version of the plugin_name)
auth=`(destination_jenkins_username, destination_jenkins_password)`
header=`{crumb_field:crumb_value,"Content-Type":"application/xml”}` (where crumb_field=Jenkins-Crumb and get crumb value using API call {DESTINATION_JENKINS_SERVER}/crumbIssuer/api/json
For job migration:
You can get the list of jobs installed on {SOURCE_JENKINS_URL} using a REST call, {SOURCE_JENKINS_URL}/view/All/api/json
Then you can get each job config.xml file from the jobs on {SOURCE_JENKINS_URL} using the job URL {SOURCE_JENKINS_URL}/job/{JOB_NAME}.
Use this config.xml file to POST the content of the XML file on {DESTINATION_JENKINS_URL} and that will create a job on {DESTINATION_JENKINS_URL}.
I have created a menu-driven utility in Python which asks the user to start plugin or Jenkins migration and uses Jenkins REST API calls to do it.
You can refer the JenkinsMigration.docx from this URL
jenkinsjenkinsmigrationjenkinsrestapi
Let us say we are migrating Jenkins LTS from PC1 to PC2 (irrispective of LTS version is same of upgraded).
It is easy to use ThinBackUp Plugin for migration or Upgrade of Jenkins version.
Step1: Prepare PC1 for migration
Manage Jenkins -> ThinbackUp -> Setting
Select correct options and directory for backup
If you need a job history and artifacts need to be added then please select 'Back build results' option as well.
Go back click on Backup Now.
Note: This Thinbackup will also take Plugin Backup which is optional.
Check the ThinbackUp folder must have a folder with current date and timestamp.
(wait for couple of minutes it might take some time.)
You are ready with your back, .zip it and copy to PARTICULAR (which will be 'Backup directory') directory in PC2.
Unzip ThinbackUp zipped folder.
Stop Jenkins Service in PC1.
Step2: Install Jenkins (Install using .war file or Paste archived version) in PC2.
Create Jenkins Service using command sc create <Jenkins_PC2Servicename> binPath="<Path_to_Jenkinsexe>/jenkins.exe"
Modify JENKINS_HOME/jenkins.xml if needed in PC2.
Run windows service <Jenkins_PC2Servicename> in PC2
Manage Jenkins -> ThinbackUp -> Setting
Make sure that you PARTICULAR path from step1 as Backup Directory in ThinBackup settings.
ThinbackUp -> Restore will give you a Dropdown list, choose a right backup (identify with date and timestamp).
Wait for some minutes and you have latest backup configurations including jobs history and plugins in PC2.
In case if there are additional changes needed in JENKINS_HOME/Jenkins.xml (coming from PC1 ThinbackUp which is not needed) then this modification need to do manually.
NOTE: If you are using Database setting of SCM in your Jenkins jobs then you need to take extra care as all SCM plugins do not support to carry Database settings with the help of ThinbackUp plugin.
e.g. If you are using PTC Integrity SCM Plugin, and some Jenkins jobs are using DB using Integrity, then it will create a directory JENKINS_Home/IntegritySCM, ThinbackUp will not include this DB while taking backup.
Solution: Directly Copy this JENKINS_Home/IntegritySCM folder from PC1 to PC2.