How to setup Jenkins Slave to run as a windows service using command line?

I want to create a jenkins slave using command line. The is a document about setting up jenkins slave as a windows service and I followed the instruction there. I can run javaws http://10.121.33.4:8080/computer/Test-Jenkins-Slave-2/slave-agent.jnlp to connect slave to master but the problem of this is it will get disconnect after the machine is restarted.

I think the best way to do this is to install slave as a service. So, I tried to follow the instruction again on that page. I have jenkins Slave installed as a service and the registry key added like below.

Service’s property:

Registry values:

I wonder if I did anything incorrectly? Is the document missing something?

3 Answers 3

(Last 2019-09-20) The quickest and most reliable way that I’ve found to install a Jenkins Worker/Slave as a service is to:

1. Download the jnlp file from Jenkins’ «/slave-agent.jnlp» endpoint
2. Bring up the «slave-agent» GUI
3. Select the «Install as a service» option from the GUI

Detailed steps and pictures below.

Note: Don’t bother with modifying the registry, the embedded install makes the process quick, easy, and repeatable.

So lets say you’ve configured a node named «amberboch». On the worker/slave (i.e. «amberboch») machine:

1. Bring up a browser and enter the Jenkins URL for new node (or click on the node within the «Nodes» page of Jenkins), and create the node within Jenkins as you normally would.
2. Once the node is created, navigate to the node (Jenkins > Nodes > amberboch) and include «/slave-agent.jnlp» on the end of the browser’s URL (e.g. «http://jenkins:8080/computer/computer/amberboch**/slave-agent.jnlp**») to download the jnlp file.
3. Execute the slave-agent.jnlp file with Administrator privileges. (You may have specify Java/javaws to start it with «Java(TM) Web Start Launcher») (Alternatively, you may use a format found in JENKINS-29616 proved by Pau Sabats to create a new agent jar, which should retain connection information: java -jar newAgent.jar -jnlpUrl http://jenkins:8080/computer/amberboch/slave-agent.jnlp -secret xxxxxxxx -workDir «E:\JenkinsClient»)
4. Select the «File» => «Install as a service» option from the slave-agent.jnlp GUI

Once the service has been installed, change the service’s «log-on» credentials as needed for your particular installation. You may have to reset permissions or delete directories within the work-space if, whilst running in Administrator mode, a job happened to run and thereby created a work-space sub-folder (as any jobs that had run would have done so as the former administrator-privilaged user, and the regular Jenkins-user profile may not have proper permissions to the old workspace folders and files.

I hope this helps save you time and headaches in managing (imho) the best CI option I’ve come across.

Best regards, Rob

PS — I found another discussion that may also help: Install Jenkins slave as a Windows service in command line

Настроика Jenkins клиента на Windows (Slave node for Jenkins)

Как подключить Windows к Jenkins? Как настроить Windows slave node on Jenkins. Есть известная проблема с подключением Windows агента к Jenkins, поэтому используем Java с установкой его в автозагрузку. Работает отлично и стабильно если все сделать по инструкции ниже. Инструкция по английски, но все предельно понятно. Если что не понятно — пишите.

1. Create, activate and update a new Windows VM (если это VM)

2. Create a local user “jenkins” with password “jenkins”.

3. Disable password policy (optional): start > type Local security policy > Account Polices > password policy > Meet complexity = disable)

4. Setup user’s auto login. Run command “netplwiz”, uncheck checkbox, select user “jenkins” and apply changes, enter password “jenkins” two times

5. Setup time sync server time.domain.com (локальный сервер времени — желательно чтобы Jenkins сервер использовал тот же сервер для синхронизации времени)

6 .Отключаем котроль подтверждения операций для установки приложений. Go to startup menu, and enter UAC — “Users Account Control Settings”. Turn the slider to down — OFF in the window that pops up. This will disable UAC warnings. (windows 10/2012 — http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-turn-off-and-disable-uac-in-windows-10/)

Download and install:

2. Git https://git-scm.com/download,

3. Install Git, select “3-th” option in a first window

Create folder C:\jenkins

Create empty bat file C:\jenkins\start_agent.bat

Add shortcut (ярлык) to Startup folder:

login as jenkins, create shortcut for C:\jenkins\start_agent.bat on Desktop,

run shell:startup, paste shortcut in opened folder.

Setup Git — настройки зависят от вашего Git, здась пример с авторизацией по ключу.

Run cmd and copy/paste code below:

git config —global user.name «Jenkins»

git config —global user.email » Этот e-mail адрес защищен от спам-ботов, для его просмотра у Вас должен быть включен Javascript «

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C » Этот e-mail адрес защищен от спам-ботов, для его просмотра у Вас должен быть включен Javascript » (don’t enter password)

Copy content from file %username%/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and paste as a key in http://local-gerrit.com for user jenkins

При необходимости — Create a file in folder %username%/.ssh/config

Hostname local-gerrit.com (ваш git)

Port 29418 (порт на катором отвеяает ваш git)

Test an ability to clone repository

git clone ssh:// Этот e-mail адрес защищен от спам-ботов, для его просмотра у Вас должен быть включен Javascript :29418/project

On Jenkins server — create a new node on Jenkins as “Dumb Slave”.

Choose “Launch slave agents via Java Web Start”

Copy command with particular -secret key

Open C:\jenkins\start_agent.bat and paste command with particular key:

Net start w32time

start /min java -jar slave.jar -jnlpUrl http://jenkins.domain.com/computer/node-name/slave-agent.jnlp -secret qwerty12

Все. Если Нода активна, можете запускать на ней работу.

RucialK

Creating a Jenkins slave as a Windows service

I really struggled to find accurate information on how to create a Jenkins slave on windows and have that slave set up as a service.
So here it is…

We’re currently using Windows 7 for the slaves with Jenkins 1.638.

In the Jenkins web client

1. Hover over the small “Jenkins” text and a small black down arrow will appear, click it
2. Now hover over “Manage Jenkins”
3. and then select the “Manage Nodes” option

Navigate to the “Manage Nodes” page

Next, on the “Manage Nodes” page

1. Choose the “New Node” option on the left
2. On the next page give the new node a name (I’d suggest setting the node name to the name of the machine)
3. Choose the “Dumb Slave option” – Note that the node name is case sensitive so wherever you refer to it you’ll need to use the exact same name you specify here
4. Click the “OK” button

Add a new node

You’ll now be taken to a page for the new node where you should

1. Set the “Remote root directory” to a folder somewhere on the slave
2. Set the “Launch method” to “Launch slave agents via Java Web Start”
3. Assuming your slave has more than a couple of GB or RAM then it’s also worth adding “-Xmx1024” to the “JVM options” or you may encounter some nasty out of memory errors from java on the slave – if you don’t see the “JVM options” section then click the “Advanced” button on the right hand side under the “Launch method”
4. Click the “Save” button

Configure the settings for the new node

From the list of nodes click on the one you just created and you will be taken to a page where there will be a command line. You will need to copy the full line and make it available to the slave. In the following diagram:

1. Should be the Jenkins master machine
2. is the secret for the Jenkins slave – make sure you make a note of this, you’ll need it on the slave in a minute
3. Click the slave.jar link to download the slave.jar file and copy it to the slave, let’s say to D:\Jenkins\slave.jar

Remember the slave secret

On the Jenkins slave to be

Download and install the Windows Resource Kit. You will likely be prompted with a message suggesting that the Resource Kit is not compatible with Windows 7, simply assure the installer that you know what you’re doing and install it anyway.

Create a blank service called “Jenkins Slave” by running the following from a command prompt:

Under the registry key:

1. Create a string value “Description”
2. Populate it with “Jenkins Continuous Integration Slave”

Add the slave service description

1. Create a new key “Parameters”
2. Under “Parameters” create a new string value “Application”
3. Populate it with the full path to java.exe, something like “C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_66\bin\java.exe”
4. Under “Parameters” Create a new string value “AppParameters”
5. Populate it with “-jar D:\jenkins\slave.jar -jnlpUrl http://jenkins-master:8080/computer/new_machine/slave-agent.jnlp – secret 96c9999999999999999999999999999999999999999”
6. The slave.jar should point to the correct location
7. The Jenkins master machine name should be correct
8. The new Jenkins slave machine should be correct
9. Make sure you use the secret for this machine that you copied from the master when adding the new node

Add the rest of the new node registry settings

Open the Services application from Control Panel – Administrative Tools, find the “Jenkins Slave” service, right click on the service and go to “Properties”.

1. Go to the “Recovery” tab and change “First failure” and “Second failure” to “Restart the Service” – occasionally we found it wouldn’t start up first time out
2. Go to the “Log On” tab and set an account and password- we found that using an account with local admin rights on the slave machine worked best but this is probably unnecessary
3. Go to the “General” tab and change the “Startup type” to “Automatic” – make sure the service starts up when you restart the slave
4. Click the “OK” button

Now start the service

In the Jenkins web client

Give it a few seconds and you should see the new slave come on line in the Jenkins web client:

1. It should appear as the machine’s name
2. And the little picture of a computer will no longer have a little red x next to it

New slave online

How to Install Jenkins Slave as Windows Service

If you are running Jenkins master on Azure, it automatically provisions Windows VM host but it’s not permanent. What if you want a permanent Windows slave? What if you want to configure a slave on an existing Windows machie? In this example, I am using my own Windows 10 desktop environment (not a good practice however) to make it a permanent Jenkins slave for this article.

I think the best way to run Jenkins slave on Windows is to install it as a Windows service. It can start automatically as Windows starts and we could programmatically check the status, start, stop and restart.

I found it quite hard to find step-by-step information on how to do it and this documentation is really old and it doesn’t work any more with much tighter security on Windows, so I’m going to summarize the right way here.

Creating a Node

1. Logon to Jenkins with an administrative account.
2. Go to Manage Jenkins.
3. Click Manage Nodes.
   
4. Click New Node.
5. Enter node name like “win-bld01” and click Permanent Agent and then click OK.
   
6. Enter a path in Remote root directory of your choice and choose “Launch agent via Java Web Start” in Launch method.
   
7. Click OK to save the setting.

Download and Configure Jenkins Slave Windows Service

1. Download the latest Windows Service wrapper executable from http://repo.jenkins-ci.org/releases/com/sun/winsw/winsw/
   
   I’m downloading winsw-2.2.0-net4.exe in this example.
2. Place it to the Custom WorkDir path and rename it to jenkins-slave.exe. I am using a directory C:\Users\[My User Account]\jenkins in this example.
3. Create jenkins-slave.xml in the same directory with the following XML. Make sure to change the values in the XML according to your environment.

For more options, please refer to the official documentation.

Also make sure to create jenkins-slave.exe.config file with the following XML cotent to prevent the executable from running on the earlier version of the .NET Framework.

Install Jenkins Slave

1. Open Windows command line as Administrator.
2. Navigate to the directory where you have jenkins-slave.exe e.g. cd C:\Users\amaterasu48\jenkins
3. Install the service by executing the following command.
   jenkins-slave.exe install
4. Once it’s successful, you will see a message like this.
   2019-05-22 23:17:14,486 INFO — Installing the service with id ‘JenkinsSlave’
5. Right click Windows start button and select Run. Enter services.msc to open Windows Service management console. You will see the Jenkins agent Windows service we just installed.
   
6. Right click it and Start it.

Recap

It’s not a few simple steps but as long as this can be automated, it should not be so painful. Also, if your Jenkins slave has to talk to other resources within your network, it’s wiser to run the Windows service as a domain user that has permission to other servers.