Upgrade Jenkins to pass the security audit, and your AIX and old RHEL build agents go offline
If you run CI at a company with a long tail of platforms, you may know this one. I've worked on CI and Jenkins for years, and I keep seeing the same problem in the community and among peers. The squeeze A lot of enterprise software ships on many platforms. Besides mainstream Linux there is AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and RHEL 6 machines (sometimes RHEL 5) that have been building releases for years and…
Enterprise software often runs on a variety of platforms, including AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, and older RHEL 6 machines. These older platforms have limitations with Java versions, with AIX 7.1 supporting IBM Java 8 and RHEL 6 no longer supported. Jenkins frequently updates its Java baseline, requiring controllers and agents to use newer Java versions.
However, an audit revealed that old agents cannot connect to newer controllers due to outdated Java versions. There are two options: upgrade the controller, which would disqualify the old agents, or keep the old agents running and build the platforms manually. Building a solution, the developer created Agent8, a Jenkins agent that runs on Java 8 and connects to a current Jenkins controller on Java 21+.
This allows old hosts to function as ordinary nodes, preserving labels, executors, and various steps. To use Agent8, download the agent.jar, run the installation script, and restart the agent. The original jar is preserved as agent.jar.before-agent8. The controller setting Version Monitor in the Version column plugin can be adjusted to prevent disconnections.
The developer tested Agent8 extensively in CI and on real AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX systems. However, it does not support agents launched by the SSH Build Agents plugin and is not an official Jenkins project. The developer welcomes feedback, issues, and real-world experiences from those who try Agent8.
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