Jenkins node

Provisioning for a Jenkins CI node on Ubuntu 14.04 for Plone projects.

Requirements

None.

Role variables

• python_versions: list of Python versions to install with uv (default: 3.9 through 3.14). Each version ends up as /srv/pythonX.Y/bin/python3.
• uv_python_install_dir: where uv stores the interpreters (default: /srv/uv).
• nvm_version: version of nvm to install for the jenkins user (default: 0.40.3).
• nvm_node_version: node version that gets installed and set as default via nvm (default: 22).

Example playbook

- hosts: node5.jenkins.plone.org
  roles:
     - { role: plone.jenkins_node }

The role variables can be overridden in the playbook. For example to install a different node version:

- hosts: node5.jenkins.plone.org
  roles:
    - role: plone.jenkins_node
      nvm_node_version: "24"

Server playbook

Looking for the ansible playbook for the jenkins master?

Look no further: plone.jenkins_server

Usage

Make a checkout of the repo and go to this directory. Do not give a different name to the directory: it must be called plone.jenkins_node otherwise some stuff (roles) cannot be found.

Install the ansible command. For example on Mac:

brew install ansible

The Python interpreters are installed with uv (pre-built binaries, nothing gets compiled), so no extra galaxy roles are needed.

Create an inventory.yml mentioning your host:

nodes:
  hosts:
    jenkinsnode1.yourserver.io

Change ansible.yml to refer to your host instead of localhost. Here you can also override role variables like nvm_node_version (see the example playbook above). It may be better to put inventory.yml and ansible.yml in a different directory that is not in this repo, or not under source control.

Now you can run the playbook:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml --check ansible.yml

This does not make any changes yet, but may be a good initial test.

Some tasks depend on the changes of earlier tasks (for example the Python symlinks need the interpreters that uv installs), so at some point --check gives an error and has lost its usefulness. Then we run the command for real:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml ansible.yml

This can take a long time, with sometimes nothing being reported. Have patience.

If you need to login with a different remote user, use the -u parameter:

ansible-playbook -i inventory.yml -u <remoteuser> ansible.yml

Manual steps

The robot jobs take far too much memory. 24 GB seems wanted... If you don't have enough memory on hard machine, you can add swap. To create a swapfile of 32 GB, as root (or sudo):

time dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile1 bs=1M count=32768
mkswap /swapfile1
chmod 600 /swapfile1
swapon /swapfile1
echo "/swapfile1 none swap sw 0 0" >> /etc/fstab

We need newer node/npm versions to run robotframework tests. The playbook installs nvm for the jenkins user and sets a default node version (see the nvm_version and nvm_node_version role variables). You can check it like this:

sudo su -l jenkins
node --version; npm --version

You should have as minimum node version 22.

Register node in Jenkins

• Login on jenkins.plone.org.
• Go to https://jenkins.plone.org/manage/computer/
• Click the button to add a new node.
• Give it a name. Itdoes not have to be NodeX. No spaces please.
• Select an existing node to copy.
• Change the IP and maybe the Port.

License

GPLv2

Author information

Plone Community.