Can't Launch & Stuck Initializing After Fresh Install

I installed Jenkins using the prescribed method and have not been able to get it to work. The service hangs after this point in the startup process:

root@jenkins:/var/log/jenkins# systemctl status jenkins
* jenkins.service - Jenkins Continuous Integration Server
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/jenkins.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: activating (start) since Sat 2023-02-18 03:14:17 UTC; 9s ago
   Main PID: 50264 (java)
      Tasks: 51 (limit: 76990)
     Memory: 496.6M
        CPU: 11.856s
     CGroup: /system.slice/jenkins.service
             `-50264 /usr/bin/java -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.util.logging.config.file=/var/log/jenkins/logging.pr>

Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: *************************************************************
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: *************************************************************
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: Jenkins initial setup is required. An admin user has been created and a passwor>
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: Please use the following password to proceed to installation:
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: 49754a687d0b47f9af57965bfc3fbf8c
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: This may also be found at: /var/lib/jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: *************************************************************
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: *************************************************************
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]: *************************************************************
Feb 18 03:14:21 jenkins jenkins[50264]:

And the client has not moved past this screen after 3 hours, despite the page refreshing every 5 minutes or so.

There is no additional information in the systemctl logs even after setting the logging level to ALL by using an appropriate logging.properties file.

Jenkins Version: 2.375.3
Java Version:

  • Package: openjdk-11-jre
  • Version: 11.0.18+10-1~deb11u1
    OS: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)

Not a great experience, overall, as the service initially failed to start repeatedly. It’s been so long since I started trying to get this up and running that I forgot how I fixed it. Can anyone help? If not, where should I report bugs officially?

See the issue reporting instructions at:

Since there are over 275000 installations of Jenkins running in the world and over 40000 of those are running Jenkins 2.375.x, you have a very specific situation, likely unique to you. I would expect it to be quite a challenge to identify what is causing your system to behave differently from all those other systems.

Some of the things that might cause Jenkins to fail to progress could include:

  • Inadequate memory (be sure there is enough memory)
  • Insufficient disc space (be sure there is enough disc space)
  • I/O bandwidth limits exceeded on cloud hosts (use a local file system)
  • File system locks or delays on network file systems (use a local file system)
  • Inadequate memory (be sure there is enough memory)

4 GB meets the reccomended requirememts, and the minimum is 256MB. If the system is not progressing when it meets the minimum specified, that is a bug either in the program or the specs.

  • Insufficient disc space (be sure there is enough disc space)
    I have 15 GB of drive space, which far exceeds the minimum and should not cause any issues.

  • I/O bandwidth limits exceeded on cloud hosts (use a local file system)
    This is not a cloud system, this point is irrelevant.

  • File system locks or delays on network file systems (use a local file system)
    This a local file system, this point is irrelevant.

Also, Mike, as a member of the Governance Board, you might consider being a bit less condescending to people asking for help with the system you govern. I understand that jenkins is popular and generally pretty usable, that’s why I chose it for the project I’m doing, and why I’m frustrated that it did not work. If this is the kind of community that surrounds this product, I will look elsewhere.

Thank you for your time.

My apologies that I was condescending in my reply. I’ll work diligently to be more considerate in the future. Thanks for noting that I was being condescending.

I think that you have a very specific situation that will likely require unique guesses and special exploration to understand it. I don’t recall the last time someone encountered a case where the Jenkins controller failed to make progress during startup. If you learn other things about that system that might have caused it to stop, please share them.

I have been able to get jenkins running, but it took giving the VM 8GB of RAM. The recommended 4GB was not enough to successfully get jenkins to run. This may be a first-time run type of issue.

It looks like some bit of the kernel called the OOM Killer killed the process when it took up all the RAM. This caused jenkins to shut down before the login screen was shown. I’m not sure if this is a standard kernel feature or not.

Flattening out that spike seems like something to look at.

1 Like

If the jenkins startup fails with errors like NoClassDefFound its because it gets terminated in between due to timeout. This is the reason if you manually start the jenkins through war it will work but with service it will not.
To fix this issue setting the timeout in the service configs helped me.

sudo vi /lib/systemd/system/jenkins.service

# Configures the time to wait for start-up. If Jenkins does not signal start-up
# completion within the configured time, the service will be considered failed
# and will be shut down again. Takes a unit-less value in seconds, or a time span
# value such as "5min 20s". Pass "infinity" to disable the timeout logic.
TimeoutStartSec=5min