Jenkins and GitLab Setup

Warning

GitLab support will be removed with Artemis 8.0.0. Please use LocalVC and Jenkins instead for new installations with Jenkins as the CI system. For existing Jenkins and GitLab Setups, you can migrate to LocalVC with this not merged Pull Request.

This section describes how to set up a programming exercise environment based on Jenkins and GitLab. Optional commands are in curly brackets {}.

The following assumes that all instances run on separate servers. If you have one single server, or your own NGINX instance, just skip all NGINX related steps and use the configurations provided under Separate NGINX Configurations

If you want to setup everything on your local development computer, ignore all NGINX related steps. Just make sure that you use unique port mappings for your Docker containers (e.g. 8081 for GitLab, 8082 for Jenkins, 8080 for Artemis)

Prerequisites:

• Docker

Make sure that docker has enough memory (~ 6GB). To adapt it, go to Preferences -> Resources and restart Docker.

Artemis

In order to use Artemis with Jenkins as Continuous Integration Server and Gitlab as Version Control Server, you have to configure the file application-prod.yml (Production Server) or application-artemis.yml (Local Development) accordingly. Please note that all values in <..> have to be configured properly. These values will be explained below in the corresponding sections. If you want to set up a local environment, copy the values below into your application-artemis.yml or application-local.yml file (the latter is recommended), and follow the Gitlab Server Quickstart guide.

artemis:
 course-archives-path: ./exports/courses
 repo-clone-path: ./repos
 repo-download-clone-path: ./repos-download
 bcrypt-salt-rounds: 11  # The number of salt rounds for the bcrypt password hashing. Lower numbers make it faster but more unsecure and vice versa.
                         # Please use the bcrypt benchmark tool to determine the best number of rounds for your system. https://github.com/ls1intum/bcrypt-Benchmark
 user-management:
     use-external: false
     internal-admin:
         username: artemis_admin
         password: artemis_admin
     accept-terms: false
     login:
         account-name: TUM
 version-control:
     url: http://localhost:8081
     user: root
     password: artemis_admin # created in Gitlab Server Quickstart step 2
     token: artemis-gitlab-token # generated in Gitlab Server Quickstart steps 4 and 5
 continuous-integration:
     user: artemis_admin
     password: artemis_admin
     url: http://localhost:8082
     vcs-credentials: artemis_gitlab_admin_credentials
     artemis-authentication-token-key: artemis_notification_plugin_token
     artemis-authentication-token-value: artemis_admin
     build-timeout: 30
 git:
     name: Artemis
     email: artemis@xcit.tum.de
jenkins:
    internal-urls:
        ci-url: http://jenkins:8080
        vcs-url: http://gitlab:80
    use-crumb: false
server:
     port: 8080
     url: http://172.17.0.1:8080 # `http://host.docker.internal:8080` for Windows

In addition, you have to start Artemis with the profiles gitlab and jenkins so that the correct adapters will be used, e.g.:

--spring.profiles.active=dev,jenkins,gitlab,artemis,scheduling

Please read Server Setup for more details.

For a local setup on Windows you can use http://host.docker.internal appended by the chosen ports as the version-control and continuous-integration url.

Make sure to change the server.url value in application-dev.yml or application-prod.yml accordingly. This value will be used for the communication hooks from GitLab to Artemis and from Jenkins to Artemis. In case you use a different port than 80 (http) or 443 (https) for the communication, you have to append it to the server.url value, e.g. 127.0.0.1:8080.

When you start Artemis for the first time, it will automatically create an admin user.

Note: Sometimes Artemis does not generate the admin user which may lead to a startup error. You will have to create the user manually in the MySQL database and in GitLab. Make sure both are set up correctly and follow these steps:

1. Use the tool mentioned above to generate a password hash.

2. Connect to the database via a client like MySQL Workbench and execute the following query to create the user. Replace artemis_admin and HASHED_PASSWORD with your chosen username and password:

   INSERT INTO `artemis`.`jhi_user` (`id`,`login`,`password_hash`,`first_name`,`last_name`,`email`,
   `activated`,`lang_key`,`activation_key`,`reset_key`,`created_by`,`created_date`,`reset_date`,
   `last_modified_by`,`last_modified_date`,`image_url`,`last_notification_read`,`registration_number`)
   VALUES (1,"artemis_admin","HASHED_PASSWORD","artemis","administrator","artemis_admin@localhost",
   1,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL);
   

3. Give the user admin and user roles:

   INSERT INTO `artemis`.`jhi_user_authority` (`user_id`, `authority_name`) VALUES (1,"ROLE_ADMIN");
   INSERT INTO `artemis`.`jhi_user_authority` (`user_id`, `authority_name`) VALUES (1,"ROLE_USER");
   

4. Create a user in Gitlab (http://your-gitlab-domain/admin/users/new) and make sure that the username and email are the same as the user from the database:

5. Edit the new admin user (http://your-gitlab-domain/admin/users/artemis_admin/edit) to set the password to the same value as in the database:

Starting the Artemis server should now succeed.

GitLab

GitLab Server Quickstart

The following steps describes how to set up the GitLab server in a semi-automated way. This is ideal as a quickstart for developers. For a more detailed setup, see Manual Gitlab Server Setup. In a production setup, you have to at least change the root password (by either specifying it in step 1 or extracting the random password in step 2) and generate random access tokens (instead of the pre-defined values). Set the variable GENERATE_ACCESS_TOKENS to true in the gitlab-local-setup.sh script and use the generated tokens instead of the predefined ones.

1. Start the GitLab container defined in docker/gitlab-jenkins-mysql.yml by running

   GITLAB_ROOT_PASSWORD=QLzq3QvpD1Zbq7A1VWvw docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml up --build -d gitlab
   

   If you want to generate a random password for the root user, remove the part before docker compose from the command. GitLab passwords must not contain commonly used combinations of words and letters.

   The file uses the GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG environment variable to configure the Gitlab instance after the container is started. It disables prometheus monitoring, sets the ssh port to 2222, and adjusts the monitoring endpoint whitelist by default.

2. Wait a couple of minutes since GitLab can take some time to set up. Open the instance in your browser (usually http://localhost:8081).

   You can then login using the username root and your password (which defaults to artemis_admin, if you used the command from above). If you did not specify the password, you can get the initial one using:

   docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml exec gitlab cat /etc/gitlab/initial_root_password
   

3. Insert the GitLab root user password in the file application-local.yml (in src/main/resources) and insert the GitLab admin account. If you copied the template from above and used the default password, this is already done for you.

   artemis:
       version-control:
           url: http://localhost:8081
           user: root
           password: your.gitlab.admin.password # artemis_admin
   

4. You now need to create an admin access token. You can do that using the following command (which takes a while to execute):

   docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml exec gitlab gitlab-rails runner "token = User.find_by_username('root').personal_access_tokens.create(scopes: ['api', 'read_api', 'read_user', 'read_repository', 'write_repository', 'sudo'], name: 'Artemis Admin Token', expires_at: 365.days.from_now); token.set_token('artemis-gitlab-token'); token.save!"
   

   You can also manually create in by navigating to http://localhost:8081/-/profile/personal_access_tokens?name=Artemis+Admin+token&scopes=api,read_api,read_user,read_repository,write_repository,sudo and generate a token with all scopes.

   Copy this token into the ADMIN_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN field in the docker/gitlab/gitlab-local-setup.sh file.

   If you used the command to generate the token, you don’t have to change the gitlab-local-setup.sh file.

5. Adjust the GitLab setup by running, this will configure GitLab’s network setting to allow local requests:

   docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml exec gitlab /bin/sh -c "sh /gitlab-local-setup.sh"
   

   This script can also generate random access tokens, which should be used in a production setup. Change the variable $GENERATE_ACCESS_TOKENS to true to generate the random tokens and insert them into the Artemis configuration file.

6. You’re done! Follow the Automated Jenkins Server Setup section for configuring Jenkins.

Manual GitLab Server Setup

GitLab provides no possibility to set a users password via API without forcing the user to change it afterwards (see Issue 19141). Therefore, you may want to patch the official gitlab docker image. Thus, you can use the following Dockerfile:

FROM gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest
RUN sed -i '/^.*user_params\[:password_expires_at\] = Time.current if admin_making_changes_for_another_user.*$/s/^/#/' /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/lib/api/users.rb

This Dockerfile disables the mechanism that sets the password to expired state after changed via API. If you want to use this custom image, you have to build the image and replace all occurrences of gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest in the following instructions by your chosen image name.

1. Pull the latest GitLab Docker image (only if you don’t use your custom gitlab image)

   docker pull gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest
   

Start GitLab

2. Run the image (and change the values for hostname and ports). Add -p 2222:22 if cloning/pushing via ssh should be possible. As GitLab runs in a docker container and the default port for SSH (22) is typically used by the host running Docker, we change the port GitLab uses for SSH to 2222. This can be adjusted if needed.

   Make sure to remove the comments from the command before running it.

   docker run -itd --name gitlab \
       --hostname your.gitlab.domain.com \   # Specify the hostname
       --restart always \
       -m 3000m \                            # Optional argument to limit the memory usage of Gitlab
       -p 8081:80 -p 443:443 \               # Alternative 1: If you are NOT running your own NGINX instance
       -p <some port of your choosing>:80 \  # Alternative 2: If you ARE running your own NGINX instance
       -p 2222:22 \                          # Remove this if cloning via SSH should not be supported
       -v gitlab_data:/var/opt/gitlab \
       -v gitlab_logs:/var/log/gitlab \
       -v gitlab_config:/etc/gitlab \
       gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest
   

3. Wait a couple of minutes until the container is deployed and GitLab is set up, then open the instance in you browser. You can get the initial password for the root user using docker exec gitlab cat /etc/gitlab/initial_root_password.

4. We recommend to rename the root admin user to artemis. To rename the user, click on the image on the top right and select Settings. Now select Account on the left and change the username. Use the same password in the Artemis configuration file application-artemis.yml

   artemis:
       version-control:
           user: artemis
           password: the.password.you.chose
   

5. If you run your own NGINX or if you install Gitlab on a local development computer, then skip the next steps (6-7)

6. Configure GitLab to automatically generate certificates using LetsEncrypt. Edit the GitLab configuration

   docker exec -it gitlab /bin/bash
   nano /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
   

   And add the following part

   letsencrypt['enable'] = true                          # GitLab 10.5 and 10.6 require this option
   external_url "https://your.gitlab.domain.com"         # Must use https protocol
   letsencrypt['contact_emails'] = ['gitlab@your.gitlab.domain.com'] # Optional
   
   nginx['redirect_http_to_https'] = true
   nginx['redirect_http_to_https_port'] = 80
   

7. Reconfigure GitLab to generate the certificate.

   # Save your changes and finally run
   gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

   If this command fails, try using

   gitlab-ctl renew-le-certs
   

8. Login to GitLab using the Artemis admin account and go to the profile settings (upper right corner → Preferences)

   

GitLab Access Token

9. Go to Access Tokens

10. Create a new token named “Artemis” and give it rights api, read_api, read_user, read_repository, write_repository, and sudo.

11. Copy the generated token and insert it into the Artemis configuration file application-artemis.yml

    artemis:
        version-control:
            token: your.generated.api.token
    

12. (Optional, only necessary for local setup) Allow outbound requests to local network

    There is a known limitation for the local setup: webhook URLs for the communication between GitLab and Artemis and between GitLab and Jenkins cannot include local IP addresses. This option can be deactivated in GitLab on <https://gitlab-url>/admin/application_settings/network → Outbound requests. Another possible solution is to register a local URL, e.g. using ngrok, to be available over a domain the Internet.

13. Adjust the monitoring-endpoint whitelist. Run the following command

    docker exec -it gitlab /bin/bash
    

    Then edit the GitLab configuration

    nano /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
    

    Add the following lines

    gitlab_rails['monitoring_whitelist'] = ['0.0.0.0/0']
    gitlab_rails['gitlab_shell_ssh_port'] = 2222
    

    This will disable the firewall for all IP addresses. If you only want to allow the server that runs Artemis to query the information, replace 0.0.0.0/0 with ARTEMIS.SERVER.IP.ADDRESS/32

    If you use SSH and use a different port than 2222, you have to adjust the port above.

14. Disable prometheus. As we encountered issues with the Prometheus log files not being deleted and therefore filling up the disk space, we decided to disable Prometheus within GitLab. If you also want to disable prometheus, edit the configuration again using

    nano /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
    

    and add the following line

    prometheus_monitoring['enable'] = false
    

    The issue with more details can be found here.

15. Add a SSH key for the admin user.

    Artemis can clone/push the repositories during setup and for the online code editor using SSH. If the SSH key is not present, the username + token will be used as fallback (and all git operations will use HTTP(S) instead of SSH).

    You first have to create a SSH key (locally), e.g. using ssh-keygen (more information on how to create a SSH key can be found e.g. at ssh.com or at gitlab.com).

    The list of supported ciphers can be found at Apache Mina.

    It is recommended to use a password to secure the private key, but it is not mandatory.

    Please note that the private key file must be named ìd_rsa, id_dsa, id_ecdsa or id_ed25519, depending on the ciphers used.

    You now have to extract the public key and add it to GitLab. Open the public key file (usually called id_rsa.pub (when using RSA)) and copy it’s content (you can also use cat id_rsa.pub to show the public key).

    Navigate to GITLAB-URL/-/profile/keys and add the SSH key by pasting the content of the public key.

    <ssh-key-path> is the path to the folder containing the id_rsa file (but without the filename). It will be used in the configuration of Artemis to specify where Artemis should look for the key and store the known_hosts file.

    <ssh-private-key-password> is the password used to secure the private key. It is also needed for the configuration of Artemis, but can be omitted if no password was set (e.g. for development environments).

16. Reconfigure GitLab

    gitlab-ctl reconfigure
    

Upgrade GitLab

You can upgrade GitLab by downloading the latest Docker image and starting a new container with the old volumes:

docker stop gitlab
docker rename gitlab gitlab_old
docker pull gitlab/gitlab-ce:latest

See https://hub.docker.com/r/gitlab/gitlab-ce/ for the latest version. You can also specify an earlier one.

Note that upgrading to a major version may require following an upgrade path. You can view supported paths here.

Start a GitLab container just as described in Start-Gitlab and wait for a couple of minutes. GitLab should configure itself automatically. If there are no issues, you can delete the old container using docker rm gitlab_old and the olf image (see docker images) using docker rmi <old-image-id>. You can also remove all old images using docker image prune -a

Jenkins

Automated Jenkins Server Setup

The following steps describe how to deploy a pre-configured version of the Jenkins server. This is ideal as a quickstart for developers. For a more detailed setup, see Manual Jenkins Server Setup. In a production setup, you have to at least change the user credentials (in the file jenkins-casc-config-gitlab.yml) and generate random access tokens.

1. Create a new access token in GitLab named Jenkins and give it api and read_repository rights. You can do either do it manually or using the following command:

docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml exec gitlab gitlab-rails runner "token = User.find_by_username('root').personal_access_tokens.create(scopes: ['api', 'read_repository'], name: 'Jenkins', expires_at: 365.days.from_now); token.set_token('jenkins-gitlab-token'); token.save!"

2. You can now first build and deploy Jenkins, then you can also start the other services which weren’t started yet:

   JAVA_OPTS=-Djenkins.install.runSetupWizard=false docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml up --build -d jenkins
   docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml up -d
   

   Jenkins is then reachable under http://localhost:8082/ and you can login using the credentials specified in jenkins-casc-config-gitlab.yml (defaults to artemis_admin as both username and password).

3. The application-local.yml must be adapted with the values configured in jenkins-casc-config-gitlab.yml:

   artemis:
       user-management:
           use-external: false
           internal-admin:
               username: artemis_admin
               password: artemis_admin
       version-control:
           url: http://localhost:8081
           user: artemis_admin
           password: artemis_admin
       continuous-integration:
           user: artemis_admin
           password: artemis_admin
           url: http://localhost:8082
           vcs-credentials: artemis_gitlab_admin_credentials
           artemis-authentication-token-key: artemis_notification_plugin_token
           artemis-authentication-token-value: artemis_admin
   

4. Open the src/main/resources/config/application-jenkins.yml and change the following: Again, if you are using a development setup, the template in the beginning of this page already contains the correct values.

   jenkins:
       internal-urls:
           ci-url: http://jenkins:8080
           vcs-url: http://gitlab:80
   

5. You’re done. You can now run Artemis with the GitLab/Jenkins environment.

Manual Jenkins Server Setup

1. Pull the latest Jenkins LTS Docker image

   Run the following command to get the latest jenkins LTS docker image.

   docker pull jenkins/jenkins:lts
   

2. Create a custom docker image

   In order to install and use Maven with Java in the Jenkins container, you have to first install maven, then download Java and finally configure Maven to use Java instead of the default version. You also need to install Swift and SwiftLint if you want to be able to create Swift programming exercises.

   To perform all these steps automatically, you can prepare a Docker image:

   Create a Dockerfile with the content found here <docker/jenkins/Dockerfile>. Copy it in a file named Dockerfile, e.g. in the folder /opt/jenkins/ using vim Dockerfile.

   Now run the command docker build --no-cache -t jenkins-artemis .

   This might take a while because Docker will download Java, but this is only required once.

3. If you run your own NGINX or if you install Jenkins on a local development computer, then skip the next steps (4-7)

4. Create a file increasing the maximum file size for the nginx proxy. The nginx-proxy uses a default file limit that is too small for the plugin that will be uploaded later. Skip this step if you have your own NGINX instance.

   echo "client_max_body_size 16m;" > client_max_body_size.conf
   

5. The NGINX default timeout is pretty low. For plagiarism check and unlocking student repos for the exam a higher timeout is advisable. Therefore we write our own nginx.conf and load it in the container.

   user  nginx;
   worker_processes  auto;
   
   error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
   pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;
   
   
   events {
       worker_connections  1024;
   }
   
   
   http {
       include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
       default_type  application/octet-stream;
   
       log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                         '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                         '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
   
       access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
   
       fastcgi_read_timeout 300;
       proxy_read_timeout 300;
   
       sendfile        on;
       #tcp_nopush     on;
   
       keepalive_timeout  65;
   
       #gzip  on;
   
       include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
   }
   daemon off
   

6. Run the NGINX proxy docker container, this will automatically setup all reverse proxies and force https on all connections. (This image would also setup proxies for all other running containers that have the VIRTUAL_HOST and VIRTUAL_PORT environment variables). Skip this step if you have your own NGINX instance.

   docker run -itd --name nginx_proxy \
       -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
       --restart always \
       -v /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro \
       -v /etc/nginx/certs \
       -v /etc/nginx/vhost.d \
       -v /usr/share/nginx/html \
       -v $(pwd)/client_max_body_size.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/client_max_body_size.conf:ro \
       -v $(pwd)/nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro \
       jwilder/nginx-proxy
   

7. The nginx proxy needs another docker-container to generate letsencrypt certificates. Run the following command to start it (make sure to change the email-address). Skip this step if you have your own NGINX instance.

   docker run --detach \
       --name nginx_proxy-letsencrypt \
       --volumes-from nginx_proxy \
       --volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
       --env "DEFAULT_EMAIL=mail@yourdomain.tld" \
       jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion
   

Start Jenkins

8. Run Jenkins by executing the following command (change the hostname and choose which port alternative you need)

   docker run -itd --name jenkins \
       --restart always \
       -v jenkins_data:/var/jenkins_home \
       -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
       -v /usr/bin/docker:/usr/bin/docker:ro \
       -e VIRTUAL_HOST=your.jenkins.domain -e VIRTUAL_PORT=8080 \    # Alternative 1: If you are NOT using a separate NGINX instance
       -e LETSENCRYPT_HOST=your.jenkins.domain \                     # Only needed if Alternative 1 is used
       -p 8082:8080 \                                                # Alternative 2: If you ARE using a separate NGINX instance OR you ARE installing Jenkins on a local development computer
       -u root \
       jenkins/jenkins:lts
   

   If you still need the old setup with Python & Maven installed locally, use jenkins-artemis instead of jenkins/jenkins:lts. Also note that you can omit the -u root, -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock and -v /usr/bin/docker:/usr/bin/docker:ro parameters, if you do not want to run Docker builds on the Jenkins controller (but e.g. use remote agents).

9. Open Jenkins in your browser (e.g. localhost:8082) and setup the

   admin user account (install all suggested plugins). You can get the initial admin password using the following command.

   # Jenkins highlights the password in the logs, you can't miss it
   docker logs -f jenkins
   or alternatively
   docker exec jenkins cat /var/jenkins_home/secrets/initialAdminPassword
   

10. Set the chosen credentials in the Artemis configuration application-artemis.yml

    artemis:
        continuous-integration:
            user: your.chosen.username
            password: your.chosen.password
    

11. In a local setup, you have to disable CSRF otherwise some API endpoints will return HTTP Status 403 Forbidden. This is done be executing the following command: docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml exec -T jenkins dd of=/var/jenkins_home/init.groovy < docker/jenkins/jenkins-disable-csrf.groovy

    The last step is to disable the use-crumb option in application-local.yml:

    jenkins:
        use-crumb: false
    

Required Jenkins Plugins

Note: The custom Jenkins Dockerfile takes advantage of the Plugin Installation Manager Tool for Jenkins to automatically install the plugins listed below. If you used the Dockerfile, you can skip these steps and Server Notification Plugin. The list of plugins is maintained in docker/jenkins/plugins.yml.

You will need to install the following plugins (apart from the recommended ones that got installed during the setup process):

1. Timestamper for adding the time to every line of the build output (Timestamper might already be installed)

2. Pipeline for defining the build description using declarative files (Pipeline might already be installed)

   Note: This is a suite of plugins that will install multiple plugins

3. Pipeline Maven to use maven within the pipelines. If you want to use Docker for your build agents you may also need to install Docker Pipeline .

4. Matrix Authorization Strategy Plugin for configuring permissions for users on a project and build plan level (Matrix Authorization Strategy might already be installed).

The plugins above (and the pipeline-setup associated with it) got introduced in Artemis 4.7.3. If you are using exercises that were created before 4.7.3, you also have to install these plugins:

Please note that this setup is deprecated and will be removed in the future. Please migrate to the new pipeline-setup if possible.

1. Multiple SCMs for combining the exercise test and assignment repositories in one build

2. Post Build Task for preparing build results to be exported to Artemis

3. Xvfb for exercises based on GUI libraries, for which tests have to have some virtual display

Choose “Download now and install after restart” and checking the “Restart Jenkins when installation is complete and no jobs are running” box

Timestamper Configuration

Go to Manage Jenkins → System Configuration → Configure. There you will find the Timestamper configuration, use the following value for both formats:

'<b>'yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssX'</b> '

Server Notification Plugin

Artemis needs to receive a notification after every build, which contains the test results and additional commit information. For that purpose, we developed a Jenkins plugin, that can aggregate and POST JUnit formatted results to any URL.

You can download the current release of the plugin here (Download the .hpi file). Go to the Jenkins plugin page (Manage Jenkins → System Configuration → Plugins) and install the downloaded file under the Advanced settings tab under Deploy Plugin

Jenkins Credentials

Go to Manage Jenkins → Security → Credentials → Jenkins → Global credentials and create the following credentials

GitLab API Token

1. Create a new access token in GitLab named Jenkins and give it api rights and read_repository rights. For detailed instructions on how to create such a token follow Gitlab Access Token.

   

2. Copy the generated token and create new Jenkins credentials:

   1. Kind: GitLab API token

   2. Scope: Global

   3. API token: your.copied.token

   4. Leave the ID field blank

   5. The description is up to you

3. Go to the Jenkins settings Manage Jenkins → System. There you will find the GitLab settings. Fill in the URL of your GitLab instance and select the just created API token in the credentials dropdown. After you click on “Test Connection”, everything should work fine. If you have problems finding the right URL for your local docker setup, you can try http://host.docker.internal:8081 for Windows or http://docker.for.mac.host.internal:8081 for Mac if GitLab is reachable over port 8081.

   

Server Notification Token

1. Create a new Jenkins credential containing the token, which gets send by the server notification plugin to Artemis with every build result:

   1. Kind: Secret text

   2. Scope: Global

   3. Secret: your.secret_token_value (choose any value you want, copy it for the nex step)

   4. Leave the ID field blank

   5. The description is up to you

2. Copy the generated ID of the new credentials and put it into the Artemis configuration application-artemis.yml

   artemis:
       continuous-integration:
           artemis-authentication-token-key: the.id.of.the.notification.token.credential
   

3. Copy the actual value you chose for the token and put it into the Artemis configuration application-artemis.yml

   artemis:
       continuous-integration:
           artemis-authentication-token-value: the.actual.value.of.the.notification.token
   

GitLab Repository Access

1. Create a new Jenkins credentials containing the username and password of the GitLab administrator account:

   1. Kind: Username with password

   2. Scope: Global

   3. Username: the_username_you_chose_for_the_gitlab_admin_user

   4. Password: the_password_you_chose_for_the_gitlab_admin_user

   5. Leave the ID field blank

   6. The description is up to you

2. Copy the generated ID (e.g. ea0e3c08-4110-4g2f-9c83-fb2cdf6345fa) of the new credentials and put it into the Artemis configuration file application-artemis.yml

   artemis:
       continuous-integration:
           vcs-credentials: the.id.of.the.username.and.password.credentials.from.jenkins
   

Upgrading Jenkins

In order to upgrade Jenkins to a newer version, you need to rebuild the Docker image targeting the new version. The stable LTS versions can be viewed through the changelog and the corresponding Docker image can be found on dockerhub.

1. Open the Jenkins Dockerfile and replace the value of FROM with jenkins/jenkins:lts. After running the command docker pull jenkins/jenkins:lts, this will use the latest LTS version in the following steps. You can also use a specific LTS version. For example, if you want to upgrade Jenkins to version 2.289.2, you will need to use the jenkins/jenkins:2.289.2-lts image.

2. If you’re using docker compose, you can simply use the following command and skip the next steps.

   docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml build --no-cache
   docker compose -f docker/<Jenkins setup to be launched>.yml up -d
   

3. Build the new Docker image:

   docker build --no-cache -t jenkins-artemis .
   

   The name of the image is called jenkins-artemis.

4. Stop the current Jenkins container (change jenkins to the name of your container):

   docker stop jenkins
   

5. Rename the container to jenkins_old so that it can be used as a backup:

   docker rename jenkins jenkins_old
   

6. Run the new Jenkins instance:

   docker run -itd --name jenkins --restart always \
    -v jenkins_data:/var/jenkins_home \
    -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
    -p 9080:8080 jenkins-artemis \
   

7. You can remove the backup container if it’s no longer needed:

   docker rm jenkins_old
   

You should also update the Jenkins plugins regularly due to security reasons. You can update them directly in the Web User Interface in the Plugin Manager.

Build agents

You can either run the builds locally (that means on the machine that hosts Jenkins) or on remote build agents.

Configuring local build agents

Go to Manage Jenkins → Nodes → Built-In Node → Configure

Configure your master node like this (adjust the number of executors, if needed). Make sure to add the docker label.

Jenkins local node

Alternative local build agents setup using docker

An alternative way of adding a build agent that will use docker (similar to the remote agents below) but running locally, can be done using the jenkins/ssh-agent docker image docker image.

Prerequisites:

1. Make sure to have Docker installed

Agent setup:

1. Create a new SSH key using ssh-keygen (if a passphrase is added, store it for later)

2. Copy the public key content (e.g. in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)

3. Run:

   docker run -d --name jenkins_agent -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
   jenkins/ssh-agent:latest "<copied_public_key>"
   

4. Get the GID of the ‘docker’ group with cat /etc/groups and remember it for later

5. Enter the agent’s container with docker exec -it jenkins_agent bash

6. Install Docker with apt update && apt install docker.io

7. Check if group ‘docker’ already exists with cat /etc/groups. If yes, remove it with groupdel docker

8. Add a new ‘docker’ group with the same GID as seen in point 2 with groupadd -g <GID> docker

9. Add ‘jenkins’ user to the group with usermod -aG docker jenkins

10. Activate changes with newgrp docker

11. Now check if ‘jenkins’ has the needed permissions to run docker commands

    1. Log in as ‘jenkins’ with su jenkins

    2. Try if docker inspect <agent_container_name> works or if a permission error occurs

    3. If an permission error occurs, try to restart the docker container

12. Now you can exit the container executing exit twice (the first will exit the jenkins user and the second the container)

Add agent in Jenkins:

1. Open Jenkins in your browser (e.g. localhost:8082)

2. Go to Manage Jenkins → Credentials → System → Global credentials (unrestricted) → Add Credentials

   • Kind: SSH Username with private key

   • Scope: Global (Jenkins, nodes, items, all child items, etc)

   • ID: leave blank

   • Description: Up to you

   • Username: jenkins

   • Private Key: <content of the previously generated private key> (e.g /root/.ssh/id_rsa)

   • Passphrase: <the previously entered passphrase> (you can leave it blank if none has been specified)

   

3. Go to Manage Jenkins → Nodes → New Node

   • Node name: Up to you (e.g. Docker agent node)

   • Check ‘Permanent Agent’

   

4. Node settings:

   • # of executors: Up to you (e.g. 4)

   • Remote root directory: /home/jenkins/agent

   • Labels: docker

   • Usage: Only build jobs with label expressions matching this node

   • Launch method: Launch agents via SSH

   • Host: output of command docker inspect --format '{{ .Config.Hostname }}' jenkins_agent

   • Credentials: <the previously created SSH credential>

   • Host Key Verification Strategy: Non verifying Verification Strategy

   • Availability: Keep this agent online as much as possible

   

5. Save the new node

6. Node should now be up and running

Installing remote build agents

You might want to run the builds on additional Jenkins agents, especially if a large amount of students should use the system at the same time. Jenkins supports remote build agents: The actual compilation of the students submissions happens on these other machines but the whole process is transparent to Artemis.

This guide explains setting up a remote agent on an Ubuntu virtual machine that supports docker builds.

Prerequisites: 1. Install Docker on the remote machine: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/ubuntu/

2. Add a new user to the remote machine that Jenkins will use: sudo adduser --disabled-password --gecos "" jenkins

3. Add the jenkins user to the docker group (This allows the jenkins user to interact with docker): sudo usermod -a -G docker jenkins

4. Generate a new SSH key locally (e.g. using ssh-keygen) and add the public key to the .ssh/authorized_keys file of the jenkins user on the agent VM.

5. Validate that you can connect to the build agent machine using SSH and the generated private key and validate that you can use docker (docker ps should not show an error)

6. Log in with your normal account on the build agent machine and install Java: sudo apt install default-jre

7. Add a new secret in Jenkins, enter private key you just generated and add the passphrase, if set:

   

   Jenkins SSH Credentials

8. Add a new node (select a name and select Permanent Agent): Set the number of executors so that it matches your machine’s specs: This is the number of concurrent builds this agent can handle. It is recommended to match the number of cores of the machine, but you might want to adjust this later if needed.

   Set the remote root directory to /home/jenkins/remote_agent.

   Set the usage to Only build jobs with label expressions matching this node. This ensures that only docker-jobs will be built on this agent, and not other jobs.

   Add a label docker to the agent.

   Set the launch method to Launch via SSH and add the host of the machine. Select the credentials you just created and select Manually trusted key Verification Strategy as Host key verification Strategy. Save it.

   

   Add a Jenkins node

9. Wait for some moments while jenkins installs it’s remote agent on the agent’s machine. You can track the progress using the Log page when selecting the agent. System information should also be available.

10. Change the settings of the master node to be used only for specific jobs. This ensures that the docker tasks are not executed on the master agent but on the remote agent.

Adjust Jenkins master node settings

11. You are finished, the new agent should now also process builds.

Jenkins User Management

Artemis supports user management in Jenkins as of version 4.11.0. Creating an account in Artemis will also create an account on Jenkins using the same password. This enables users to login and access Jenkins. Updating and/or deleting users from Artemis will also lead to updating and/or deleting from Jenkins.

Unfortunately, Jenkins does not provide a Rest API for user management which present the following caveats:

• The username of a user is treated as a unique identifier in Jenkins.

• It’s not possible to update an existing user with a single request. We update by deleting the user from Jenkins and recreating it with the updated data.

• In Jenkins, users are created in an on-demand basis. For example, when a build is performed, its change log is computed and as a result commits from users who Jenkins has never seen may be discovered and created.

• Since Jenkins users may be re-created automatically, issues may occur such as 1) creating a user, deleting it, and then re-creating it and 2) changing the username of the user and reverting back to the previous one.

• Updating a user will re-create it in Jenkins and therefore remove any additionally saved Jenkins-specific user data such as API access tokens.

Jenkins Build Plan Access Control Configuration

Artemis takes advantage of the Project-based Matrix Authorization Strategy plugin to support build plan access control in Jenkins. This enables specific Artemis users to access build plans and execute actions such as triggering a build. This section explains the changes required in Jenkins in order to set up build plan access control:

1. Navigate to Manage Jenkins → Plugins → Installed plugins and make sure that you have the Matrix Authorization Strategy plugin installed

2. Navigate to Manage Jenkins → Security and navigate to the “Authorization” section

3. Select the “Project-based Matrix Authorization Strategy” option

4. In the table make sure that the “Read” permission under the “Overall” section is assigned to the “Authenticated Users” user group.

5. In the table make sure that all “Administer” permission is assigned to all administrators.

6. You are finished. If you want to fine-tune permissions assigned to teaching assistants and/or instructors, you can change them within the JenkinsJobPermission.java file.

Caching

You can configure caching for e.g. Maven repositories. See this section in the administration documentation for more details.