Chapter 5. Other Images

OpenShift Container Platform provides a container image for running Jenkins. This image provides a Jenkins server instance, which can be used to set up a basic flow for continuous testing, integration, and delivery.

This image also includes a sample Jenkins job, which triggers a new build of a BuildConfig defined in OpenShift Container Platform, tests the output of that build, and then on successful build, retags the output to indicate the build is ready for production.

OpenShift Container Platform follows the LTS releases of Jenkins. Currently, OpenShift Container Platform provides versions 1.x and 2.x.

These images come in two flavors, depending on your needs:

RHEL 7 Based Images

The RHEL 7 images are available through the Red Hat Registry:

$ docker pull registry.access.redhat.com/openshift3/jenkins-1-rhel7
$ docker pull registry.access.redhat.com/openshift3/jenkins-2-rhel7

CentOS 7 Based Images

This image is available on Docker Hub:

$ docker pull openshift/jenkins-1-centos7
$ docker pull openshift/jenkins-2-centos7

To use these images, you can either access them directly from these registries or push them into your OpenShift Container Platform Docker registry. Additionally, you can create an ImageStream that points to the image, either in your Docker registry or at the external location. Your OpenShift Container Platform resources can then reference the ImageStream. You can find example ImageStream definitions for all the provided OpenShift Container Platform images.

Templates provide parameter fields to define all the environment variables (password) with predefined defaults. OpenShift Container Platform provides templates to make creating a new Jenkins service easy. The Jenkins templates should have been registered in the default openshift project by your cluster administrator during the initial cluster setup. See Loading the Default Image Streams and Templates for more details, if required.

The two available templates both define a deployment configuration and a service. The templates differ in their storage strategy, which affects whether or not the Jenkins content persists across a pod restart.

Once you have selected which template you want, you must instantiate the template to be able to use Jenkins:

$ oc new-app jenkins-persistent

$ oc new-app jenkins-ephemeral

To customize the official OpenShift Container Platform Jenkins image, you have two options:

You can use S2I to copy your custom Jenkins Jobs definitions, additional plug-ins or replace the provided config.xml file with your own, custom, configuration.

In order to include your modifications in the Jenkins image, you need to have a Git repository with the following directory structure:

pluginId:pluginVersion

The contents of the configuration/ directory will be copied into the /var/lib/jenkins/ directory, so you can also include additional files, such as credentials.xml, there.

The following is an example build configuration that customizes the Jenkins image in OpenShift Container Platform:

apiVersion: v1
kind: BuildConfig
metadata:
  name: custom-jenkins-build
spec:
  source:                       1
    git:
      uri: https://github.com/custom/repository
    type: Git
  strategy:                     2
    sourceStrategy:
      from:
        kind: ImageStreamTag
        name: jenkins:latest
        namespace: openshift
    type: Source
  output:                       3
    to:
      kind: ImageStreamTag
      name: custom-jenkins:latest

The official OpenShift Container Platform Jenkins image includes the pre-installed Kubernetes plug-in that allows Jenkins slaves to be dynamically provisioned on multiple container hosts using Kubernetes and OpenShift Container Platform.

To use the Kubernetes plug-in, OpenShift Container Platform provides three images suitable for use as Jenkins slaves: the Base, Maven, and Node.js images.

The first is a base image for Jenkins slaves:

Two additional images that extend the base image are also provided:

Both the Maven and Node.js slave images are configured as Kubernetes Pod Template images within the OpenShift Container Platform Jenkins image’s configuration for the Kubernetes plugin. That configuration includes labels for each of the images that can be applied to any of your Jenkins jobs under their "Restrict where this project can be run" setting. If the label is applied, execution of the given job will be done under an OpenShift Container Platform pod running the respective slave image.

The Maven and Node.js Jenkins slave images provide Dockerfiles for both CentOS and RHEL that you can reference when building new slave images. Also note the contrib and contrib/bin subdirectories. They allow for the insertion of configuration files and executable scripts for your image.

The Jenkins image also provides auto-discovery and auto-configuration of slave images for the Kubernetes plug-in. The Jenkins image searches for these in the existing image streams within the project that it is running in. The search specifically looks for image streams that have the label role set to jenkins-slave.

When it finds an image stream with this label, it generates the corresponding Kubernetes plug-in configuration so you can assign your Jenkins jobs to run in a pod running the container image provided by the image stream.

Note: this scanning is only performed once, when the Jenkins master is starting. If you label additional imagestreams, the Jenkins master will need to be restarted to pick up the additional images.

To use a container image as a Jenkins slave, the image must run the slave agent as an entrypoint. For more details about this, refer to the official Jenkins documentation.

For more details on the sample job included in this image, see this tutorial.

The Jenkins image’s list of pre-installed plug-ins includes a plug-in which assists in the creating of CI/CD workflows that run against an OpenShift Container Platform server. A series of build steps, post-build actions, as well as SCM-style polling are provided which equate to administrative and operational actions on the OpenShift Container Platform server and the API artifacts hosted there.

In addition to being accessible from the classic "freestyle" form of Jenkins job, the build steps as of version 1.0.14 of the OpenShift Container Platform Pipeline Plug-in are also available to Jenkins Pipeline jobs via the DSL extension points provided by the Jenkins Pipeline Plug-in. The OpenShift Jenkins Pipeline build strategy sample illustrates how to use the OpenShift Pipeline plugin DSL versions of its steps.

The sample Jenkins job that is pre-configured in the Jenkins image utilizes the OpenShift Container Platform pipeline plug-in and serves as an example of how to leverage the plug-in for creating CI/CD flows for OpenShift Container Platform in Jenkins.

See the the plug-in’s README for a detailed description of what is available.

The experiences gained working with users of the OpenShift Pipeline plug-in, coupled with the rapid evolution of both Jenkins and OpenShift, have provided valuable insight into how to integrate OpenShift Container Platform from Jenkins jobs.

As such, the new experimental OpenShift Client Plug-in for Jenkins is now offered as a technical preview and is included in the OpenShift Jenkins images on CentOS (docker.io/openshift/jenkins-1-centos7:latest and docker.io/openshift/jenkins-2-centos7:latest). The plug-in is also available from the Jenkins Update Center. The OpenShift Client plug-in will eventually replace the OpenShift Pipeline plug-in as the tool for OpenShift integration from Jenkins jobs. The OpenShift Client Plug-in provides:

To facilitate OpenShift Container Platform Pipeline build strategy for integration between Jenkins and OpenShift Container Platform, the OpenShift Sync plug-in monitors the API server of OpenShift Container Platform for updates BuildConfigs and Builds that employ the Pipeline strategy and either creates Jenkins Pipeline projects (when a BuildConfig is created) or starts jobs in the resulting projects (when a Build is started).