Connecting Jenkins slave agent fails from Windows - jenkins

Question

I have Jenkins installed on a unix server.
I am trying to install a slave on a windows machine.
I tried first on Windows 2008 server, and failed and then I tried on my machine which is Widows 7 and failed.
The URL of the Jenkins server is http://unixserver:9997
I opened port 9997 on my machine through the firewall with no success.
I go to the server, and under the logs, there is a directory with my slave name; inside there is a log file called slave.log
I tried to launch the slave from the web launcher or from the command line:
java -jar slave.jar -jnlpUrl http://unixserver:9997/computer/slave1/slave-agent.jnlp -secret xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The error given there is:
java.io.IOException: Remote call on ghas1 failed
at hudson.remoting.Channel.call(Channel.java:723)
at org.jenkinsci.modules.slave_installer.impl.ComputerListenerImpl.onOnline(ComputerListenerImpl.java:32)
at hudson.slaves.SlaveComputer.setChannel(SlaveComputer.java:505)
at hudson.slaves.SlaveComputer.setChannel(SlaveComputer.java:347)
at jenkins.slaves.JnlpSlaveAgentProtocol$Handler.jnlpConnect(JnlpSlaveAgentProtocol.java:122)
at jenkins.slaves.JnlpSlaveAgentProtocol2$Handler2.run(JnlpSlaveAgentProtocol2.java:100)
at jenkins.slaves.JnlpSlaveAgentProtocol2.handle(JnlpSlaveAgentProtocol2.java:44)
at hudson.TcpSlaveAgentListener$ConnectionHandler.run(TcpSlaveAgentListener.java:154)
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/jvnet/localizer/Localizable
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethod(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.getPrivateMethod(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.access$1700(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass$2.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.<init>(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.lookup(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectStreamClass.initNonProxy(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readNonProxyDesc(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readClassDesc(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readNonProxyDesc(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readClassDesc(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.defaultReadFields(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readSerialData(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readOrdinaryObject(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject0(Unknown Source)
at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(Unknown Source)
at hudson.remoting.UserRequest.deserialize(UserRequest.java:182)
at hudson.remoting.UserRequest.perform(UserRequest.java:98)
at hudson.remoting.UserRequest.perform(UserRequest.java:48)
at hudson.remoting.Request$2.run(Request.java:326)
at hudson.remoting.InterceptingExecutorService$1.call(InterceptingExecutorService.java:72)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(Unknown Source)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
at hudson.remoting.Engine$1$1.run(Engine.java:63)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Answer 1

I had the same exact problem - the slave would connect but then immediately fail; the error in the server log was the same. The slave was behind a firewall so I was starting the slave manually, but I got the same error when starting the slave on the same machine as the Jenkins master process using either ssh or jnlp.
The problem went away when we restarted the Jenkins process on the server.