Jenkins Sandbox Guide

Sandbox Overview

Facts to keep in mind before working on the Sandbox:

  • Jobs are automatically deleted every Saturday at 08:00 UTC
  • Committers can login and configure Jenkins jobs in the Sandbox directly
  • Sandbox jobs cannot perform any upload/deploy tasks
  • Project configuration files and credentials are not loaded into the system
  • Sandbox jobs cannot vote on Gerrit
  • Jenkins nodes have the same OpenStack configuration as the production instance with minor differences.

Get access to the Jenkins Sandbox

The Sandbox provides a testing/experimentation environment used before pushing job templates to the production instance.

To access the Sandbox use: jenkins.example.org/sandbox

The access to the Sandbox uses the same LFID used in the production Jenkins instance, but in this case a new Helpdesk ticket needs creation to request the sandbox access.

The LF helpdesk team can add users to the appropriate group to grant permissions to access the Sandbox via https://identity.linuxfoundation.org/. The group that controls this access is <project>-jenkins-sandbox-access For example: https://identity.linuxfoundation.org/content/<project>-jenkins-sandbox-access

The requester will receive an invitation to join this group. Once accepted, the user can now access the Sandbox same way as the production Jenkins.

Push jobs to Jenkins Sandbox

Push jobs to the Jenkins Sandbox using one of these methods:

  1. Via Gerrit Comment
  2. Via JJB CLI

Method 1 is easier as it does not require installing anything on your local system. This method requires pushing the patch to Gerrit on each test. We recommend this method for quick one off edits or if you are testing another contributor’s patch.

Method 2 is more convenient for those who work on JJB templates more than once or twice.

Push jobs via Gerrit comment

This is the easiest and fastest way to start using the Jenkins Sandbox. This is the recommended way to use the Sandbox since this does not require a local installation of JJB.

To push jobs to the Jenkins Sandbox with the jjb-deploy job, add a comment on any Gerrit patch.

jjb-deploy examples
jjb-deploy <job name>
jjb-deploy ci-management-jjb-verify  # Push the ciman JJB verify job.
  • Leaving a comment on a non-ci-management patch, the resultant job will use latest master branch of the ci-management repo.
  • Leaving a comment on a ci-management patch, the resultant job’s configuration will reflect patch’s code base in Gerrit.

Push jobs via JJB CLI

JJB CLI needs configuration first.

Note

Use this configuration if you prefer to use the JJB tool locally on your system.

Configure the file ~/.config/jenkins_jobs/jenkins_jobs.ini as follows:

~/.config/jenkins_jobs/jenkins_jobs.ini
[job_builder]
ignore_cache=True
keep_descriptions=False
recursive=True
retain_anchors=True
update=jobs

[jenkins]
user=<Provide your Jenkins Sandbox user-id (LFID)>
password= <Refer below steps to get API token>
url=https://jenkins.example.org/sandbox

Note

The [jenkins] section is the default configuration section that JJB will refer to when calling jenkins-jobs without passing the -s | --server option. If you work on more than one Jenkins system then configure sections like [odl], [opnfv], [onap], etc… and pass jenkins-jobs -s odl to make it convenient to switch projects.

How to retrieve API token?

  1. Login to the Jenkins Sandbox using your LFID
  2. Go to the user page by clicking on your username on the top right
  3. Click Configure
  4. Click Show API Token

To start using the Sandbox, we must do a clone of ci-management or releng/builder (in case of ODL) repo for the project. For example:

git clone ssh://<LFID>@gerrit.example.org:29418/ci-management

Make sure you sync global-jjb also using:

git submodule update --init

Install JJB (Jenkins Job Builder).

Execute the following commands to install JJB on your machine:

cd ci-management (or cd builder)
pip install --user virtualenvwrapper
mkvirtualenv jjb
pip install jenkins-job-builder
jenkins-jobs --version
jenkins-jobs test --recursive jjb/

Note

More information on Python Virtual Environments

To work on existing jobs or create new jobs, navigate to the /jjb directory where you will find all job templates for the project. Follow the below commands to test, push or delete jobs in your Sandbox environment.

Verify JJB

After you edit or create new job templates, test the job in the Sandbox environment before you submit this job to production CI environment.

jenkins-jobs test jjb/ <job-name>

For Example:

jenkins-jobs test jjb/ ci-management-jjb-merge

If the job you would like to test is a template with variables in its name, it must be manually expanded before use. For example, the commonly used template {project-name}-jjb-merge might expand to ci-management-jjb-merge.

A successful test will output the XML description of the Jenkins job described by the specified JJB job name.

Execute the following command to pipe-out to a directory:

jenkins-jobs --conf jenkins.ini test jjb/ <job-name> -o target

The output directory will contain files with the XML configurations.

Push a Job

Ensure you have configured your jenkins.ini and verified it by outputting valid XML descriptions of Jenkins jobs. Upon successful verification, execute the following command to push the job to the Sandbox:

jenkins-jobs update -j jjb/ <job-name>

For Example:

jenkins-jobs update -j jjb/ ci-management-jjb-merge

Delete a Job

Execute the following command to Delete a job from Sandbox:

jenkins-jobs delete -j jjb/ <job-name>

For Example:

jenkins-jobs delete -j jjb/ ci-management-jjb-merge

You can also delete the job from the UI options in Jenkins Sandbox.

Edit Job via Web UI

In the Sandbox, you can directly edit the job configuration by selecting the job name and clicking on the Configure button. Click the Apply or Save (to save and exit the configuration) buttons to save the job.

This is useful in the case where you might want to test quick tweaks to a job before modifying the YAML.

Edit the job in your terminal and follow the described steps in Verify JJB and Push Job <push-job> to push any changes and have them ready to push to Gerrit.

Important

When pushing to the Sandbox with jenkins-jobs, do not forget the <job-name> parameter. Otherwise, JJB will push all job templates into the Sandbox and will flood the system.

If that happens, use `ctrl+c` to cancel the upload.

A successful run of the desired job will look like this:

INFO:jenkins_jobs.builder:Number of jobs generated:  1

Execute jobs in the Sandbox

Once you push the Jenkins job configuration to the Sandbox environment, run the job from the Sandbox WebUI. Follow the below process to trigger the build:

  1. Login into the Jenkins Sandbox WebUI
  2. Click on the job which you want to trigger
  3. Click “Build with parameters”
  4. Click Build
  5. Verify the Build Executor Status bar to check on progress.

You can click on the build number to view the job details and console output.