Running Jenkins as a Docker Container

Internal

• Jenkins Operations

Overview

One requirement when running Jenkins as a container is to write the content of $JENKINS_HOME on an external data volume. One reason is that temporary files required by builds are written into $JENKINS_HOME:

jenkins_home/workspace/test-build/.git/...

Image with Pre-Installed Recommended Plugins

The following Dockerfile builds an image that contains all recommended plugins, and Jenkins Docker Plugin. The image was configured so plugins and the WAR content will be part of the image, while $JENKINS_HOME is written on an external volume on the host system:

https://github.com/NovaOrdis/playground/blob/master/jenkins/docker/jenkins-with-plugins/Dockerfile

Build it with:

docker build -t jenkins-with-plugins .

Help

docker run --rm jenkins-with-plugins --help

Networking

If planning to execute Jenkins with a Docker plugin, while the Docker server is installed on a laptop with dynamic DHCP address, it may be necessary to start the Docker server in a non-default networking mode. For context, see 'Docker Hostname or IP address' configuration section of the Docker Plugin.

Run

The following command line assumes that the image was modified to maintain the plugin and WAR directories in custom locations:

https://github.com/NovaOrdis/playground/blob/master/jenkins/docker/jenkins-with-plugins/run

The instance will be available at http://localhost:8080/