Introduction

Usually, Jenkins master and Jenkins agent are located in the same network, therefore it is quite easy to adopt Jenkins agents using SSH. This time we will talk about the situation when Jenkins master and bunch of other DevOps tools are running in "network A" and Jenkins agents are running in "network B". Quite often connections from A to B are rejected, however, connections from B to A are accepted. There might be various reasons, in general, network B has elevated security expectations. The typical setup is Jenkins master located in public cloud and Jenkins agent(s) located in a private customer network. Private customer network might be needed in such because some sort of higher data privacy requirements must be matched or some specialised hardware is present in customer premises and it cannot be accessible directly from the public internet.

Solution

The recommended solution is master/agent setup, when the master runs in a public environment and agent is running on a server located in a private network. The agent is also called "on-premise executor" (OPE). Jobs are then performing jobs/tasks on such agent in internal/private networks. Jenkins Agent has an active connection from the internal network to internet accessible Jenkins Master via recommended JNLP port tcp/9000 and keeps listening to builds/jobs. Port can be changed, but we will keep talking about 9000. NO direct or NAT network connection is required from the internet to internal network. It is a secure and simple solution.

• Network
  • firewall opening for port tcp/9000 from relevant source agent(s) IP(s) in internal network towards internet in general (destination 0.0.0.0)
    • network layer (using TDS portal network functionality)
    • operating system layer (firewalld if needed)
• Jenkins master
  • running in public
  • listening on JNLP port tcp/9000
    • Go to https://jenkins.xxx.tds.customerx.com/configureSecurity (remember to use correct URL of your Jenkins master)
    • Set "TCP port for inbound agents" to Fixed:9000
    • Open "advanced" and choose "Inbound TCP Agent Protocol/4 (TLS encryption)" (deselect others if not relevant)
  • node added according to the following steps
    • Go to https://jenkins.xxx.tds.customerx.com/computer/new (remember to use correct URL of your Jenkins master)
    • Set "Node name" to relevant name useful for you
    • Choose "Permanent"
    • Set "Remote root directory" to "/home/jenkinsope"
    • Set "Launch method" to "Launch agent by connecting it to the master" previously called "Launch agent via Java Web Start"
  • copy secret/token for connecting agent
    • Go to https://jenkins.xxx.tds.customerx.com/computer/XXX (remember to use correct URL of your Jenkins master and replace XXX with the name of your node)

    • You will see something like:

      Code Block

      Run from agent command line: java -jar agent.jar -jnlpUrl https://jenkins.xxx.tds.customerx.com/computer/test/slave-agent.jnlp -secret 8b2911d98400bad5d45635b812b5f2e8e7c1d216bbbae9422a3ba57c691bf762 -workDir "/home/jenkinsope" Run from agent command line, with the secret stored in a file: echo 8b2911d98400bad5d45635b812b5f2e8e7c1d216bbbae9422a3ba57c691bf762 > secret-file java -jar agent.jar -jnlpUrl https://jenkins.xxx.tds.customerx.com/computer/test/slave-agent.jnlp -secret @secret-file -workDir "/home/jenkinsope"

      Please copy only the secret, which is for example in this case "8b2911d98400bad5d45635b812b5f2e8e7c1d216bbbae9422a3ba57c691bf762"

• Jenkins agent node (slave) - or so-called "on-premise executor"
  • running on a server in the internal network(s)
  • agent service(s) with service auto-start to assure automatic re-connect to Jenkins master at any time even after server reboot
    • Install dependencies

      • CentOS

        Code Block
        yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel git -y # you can install also other dependencies that will be required for your jobs

        
        

      • Ubuntu

        Code Block
        apt-get update; apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk git -y # you can install also other dependencies that will be required for your jobs

        
        

    • Installing agent

      • Prepare a folder for config

        Code Block
        mkdir -p /data/configs

        
        

      • Create service file /tmp/jenkinsope.service

        Code Block
        title jenkinsope.service
        [Unit] Description=Jenkins Slave On Premise Executor Wants=network.target After=network.target [Service] # EnvironmentFile cannnot be used on Debian/Ubuntu anymore - Reference: https://github.com/varnishcache/pkg-varnish-cache/issues/24 # So we are using drop-in config /etc/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service.d/local.conf ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -Xms${JAVA_MEMORY} -Xmx${JAVA_MEMORY} -jar /usr/bin/agent.jar -jnlpUrl ${MASTER_URL}/computer/${SLAVE_NAME}/slave-agent.jnlp -secret ${SECRET} -workDir "${WORK_DIR}" User=jenkinsope Restart=always RestartSec=10 StartLimitInterval=0 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target

        
        

      • Create config file /data/configs/jenkinsope.conf

        Code Block
        JAVA_MEMORY=512m MASTER_URL=https://jenkins.xxx.tds.customerx.com SLAVE_NAME=XXX SECRET=8b2911d98400bad5d45635b812b5f2e8e7c1d216bbbae9422a3ba57c691bf762 WORK_DIR=/home/jenkinsope

        
        

      • Create script /tmp/jenkinsope-install.sh

        Code Block

        useradd -m -s /bin/bash jenkinsope mkdir -p /home/jenkinsope/.ssh chmod 700 /home/jenkinsope/.ssh touch /home/jenkinsope/.ssh/config chmod 600 /home/jenkinsope/.ssh/* chown jenkinsope:jenkinsope -R /home/jenkinsope/.ssh source /data/configs/jenkinsope.conf wget ${MASTER_URL}/jnlpJars/agent.jar -O /usr/bin/agent.jar chmod 644 /usr/bin/agent.jar install -D -m 644 /tmp/jenkinsope.service /usr/lib/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service.d echo "[Service]" > /etc/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service.d/local.conf sed 's#^#Environment=#g' /data/configs/jenkinsope.conf >> /etc/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service.d/local.conf systemctl daemon-reload systemctl restart jenkinsope systemctl enable jenkinsope systemctl status jenkinsope

        
        

      • Run install script

        Code Block
        chmod +x /tmp/jenkinsope-install.sh /tmp/jenkinsope-install.sh

        
        

    • Uninstalling agent (for cleanup purposes or if you messed up something)

      • Create script /tmp/jenkinsope-uninstall.sh

        Code Block
        systemctl disable jenkinsope systemctl stop jenkinsope rm -f /usr/lib/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service rm -rf /etc/systemd/system/jenkinsope.service.d systemctl daemon-reload userdel -r jenkinsope rm -rf /home/jenkinsope

        
        

      • Run install script

        Code Block
        chmod +x /tmp/jenkinsope-uninstall.sh /tmp/jenkinsope-uninstall.sh

        
        

Inspired by:

• service itself - https://github.com/jenkinsci/systemd-slave-installer-module/blob/master/src/main/resources/org/jenkinsci/modules/systemd_slave_installer/jenkins-slave.service
• service parameters/options - https://gist.github.com/dragolabs/05dfe1c0899221ce51204dbfe7feecbb
• way of service installing - https://gist.github.com/michaelneale/9635744

Introduction

Usually, Jenkins master and Jenkins agent are located in the same network, therefore it is quite easy to adopt Jenkins agents using SSH. This time we will talk about the situation when Jenkins master and bunch of other DevOps tools are running in "network A" and Jenkins agents are running in "network B". Quite often connections from A to B are rejected, however, connections from B to A are accepted. There might be various reasons, in general network B has elevated security expectations. A typical . Typical setup is Jenkins master located in public cloud and Jenkins agent(s) located in a private customer network. Private customer network might be needed in such because some sort of higher data privacy requirements must be matched or some specialised hardware is present in customer premises and it cannot be accessible directly from public internet.

Solution

Recommended solution is master/agent setup, when master runs in public environment and agent is running on server located in private network. Agent is also called "on premise executor" (OPE). Jobs are then performing jobs/tasks on such agent in internal/private networks. Jenkins Agent has active connection from internal network to internet accessible Jenkins Master via recommended JNLP port tcp/9000 and keeps listening to builds/jobs. Port can be changed, but we will keep talking about 9000. NO direct or NAT network connection is required from internet to internal network. It is secure and simple solution.

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