Running Jenkins via boot2docker

If you have public projects and you want to do CI for this projects, you can use tools like TravisCI.

For small private projects you can setup a private jenkins instance. A simple way to do this is by using docker.

Installing

• Install / Update boot2docker
• Make sure you can access boot2docker by executing docker images (If you are sure boot2docker is running but you get an error message, try executing $(boot2docker shellinit))
• Download the latest jenkins docker image: docker pull jenkins
• Test if jenkins can be started by
  • executing docker run -p 8080:8080 jenkins
  • When the VM is running, execute boot2docker ip and try opening the URL http://<IP returned by boot2docker ip>:8080
  • Now you should see the Jenkins interface

Since we did not mount any host folder to the jenkins instance, we need to setup this binding so all job configurations / plugins / etc. are persistent. With boo2docker, mounting host folders to docker images has become very easy:

• Create a folder on your mac (e.g. /opt/development/jenkins_home)
• Stop the jenkins image
• Start the image by executing docker run -p 8080:8080 -v /opt/development/jenkins_home:/var/jenkins_home jenkins
• Access the jenkins instance by opening the URL http://<IP returned by boot2docker ip>:8080
• Make sure the folder mounting works as expected: The folder on your Mac should now contain some files created by jenkins.

Upgrading

• Stop your jenkins instance
• execute docker pull jenkins
• Now you can start up jenkins again as described above

Customizing

If you need some custom changes in your jenkins installation:

Example: Install bzip2 via apt-get install bzip2

• Create a file named Dockerfile
• Add the following lines:
  

FROM jenkins
USER root
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install bzip2
USER jenkins

• Execute docker build -t "<name_of_your_dockerimage>" .
• Execute docker images if your image was added
• Start up jenkins by using <name_of_your_dockerimage> instead of jenkins