Category: Oracle Linux

Most of the articles I find on creating a permanent Jenkins slave on Linux requires the slave node to be exposed to public Internet. I want the Linux slave to be pinging Jenkins master just like Windows service. Here is the way I came up with.

Install Prerequisites

• Java (sudo dnf install java-11-openjdk.x86_64)
  • Check if the Java has been installed. (java -version)
    Result:

openjdk version "11.0.12" 2021-07-20 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment 18.9 (build 11.0.12+7-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 18.9 (build 11.0.12+7-LTS, mixed mode, sharing)

Add a Permanent Node

Login to Jenkins master and click Manage Jenkins -> Manage Nodes and Clouds. Click New Node. And then give the node a name (like linux-node), select Permanent Agent and click OK.

And then, click Save button. If you navigate to the node that you just created, you should see something like…

We will take copy this line.

java -jar agent.jar -jnlpUrl https://jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net/computer/linux%2Dnode/jenkins-agent.jnlp -secret 136fa14dcc4013727e24c9f1a9b84127d7c7ca0cfa15e22c1e1d4e0140122529 -workDir ""

Now, we’ll have to download agent.jar from the Jenkins master and upload the file to the slave machine. Just click on the agent.jar link to download it.

I have the agent.jar file in Downloads directory, so here is the command to upload the agent.jar file to the slave machine.

scp ./Downloads/agent.jar hiriumi@192.168.1.29:~

Now, ssh into the slave machine.

ssh hiriumi@192.169.1.29

Trust SSL Certificate

If your Jenkins master has SSL implemented, it’s a good practice to trust the SSL certificate. Here is how you can download the certificate on your slave machine.

openssl s_client -showcerts -connect jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net:443 < /dev/null | openssl x509 -outform DER > jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net.cer

Now use keytool to trust it.

sudo keytool -trustcacerts \
-keystore "/etc/java/java-11-openjdk/java-11-openjdk-11.0.12.0.7-0.el8_4.x86_64/lib/security/cacerts" \
-storepass changeit -alias jenkins -import -file \
"/home/hiriumi/jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net.cer"

Create a Script File and Execute

Paste the Java command you get from the node page in to slave.sh

java -jar agent.jar \
-jnlpUrl https://jenkins.hayato-iriumi.net/computer/linux%2Dnode/jenkins-agent.jnlp \
-secret 136fa14dcc4013727e24c9f1a9b84127d7c7ca0cfa15e22c1e1d4e0140122529 -workDir "./slave"

Make sure slave.sh is executable by adding execute flag on the file.

chmod +x slave.sh

If you execute the slave.sh file, it starts to communicate with the Jenkins master and starts to serve as one of the Jenkins slave.

./slave.sh

Once the connection is successful, you will see something like the following.

Now, this method does not survive restarting the slave machine. Now that the communication is successful, I will look into making this script a daemon.