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Launching Windows Jenkins Agents without JNLP

Built a new Windows Server 2016 to act as a target for jenkins orchestrated builds. We are not supposed to use oracle java anymore, so I got coretta openJDK. OpenJDK does not support javaws any more. The executable does not ship with it. I have seen some scripted workarounds, but they do not work and are poorly written to boot.
What are we supposed to use to launch slave agents on Windows machines?

There are several ways to implement this but since this is a windows server you can follow steps on https://github.com/kohsuke/winsw/blob/master/doc/installation.md#winsw-installation-guide to install jenkins slave as service without javaws.

I believe #Mike was referring to: Install Slave as a Windows service (cmd version), which does not need JNLP/javaws.
OR, under Jenkins 2 (we are using 2.121.1 plus WMI Windows Agents (aka windows-slaves:1.4), there is now an option to "Let Jenkins control this Windows slave as a Windows service", essentially in the same fashion as a Linux node.
You must have an Admin account (and password). We had to follow the guidance to edit registry when "Windows agents fail to start via DCOM" (Guidance is for Server 2012) to remotely manage the service. So far, seems to be working OK, YMMV. So far, seems to be working OK, no "subtle probelms"; YMMV.
For entries:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID{72C24DD5-D70A-438B-8A42-98424B88AFB8}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{76A64158-CB41-11D1-8B02-00600806D9B6}
(There are several matches for the keys; just change the two locations indicated)
Launch 'regedit' (as Administrator)
Find (Ctrl+F) the following registry key: "{72C24DD5-D70A-438B-8A42-98424B88AFB8}" in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\
Right click and select 'Permissions'
Change owner to administrators group (Advanced...).
Change permissions for administrators group. Grant Full Control.
Change owner back to TrustedInstaller (user is "NT Service\TrustedInstaller" on local machine)
Repeat the steps 1-6 for HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID{76A64158-CB41-11D1-8B02-00600806D9B6}
Restart Remote Registry Service (Administrative Tools / Services)

For me the easiest and best working solution to launch Windows Jenkins Agents without JNLP was to run in the command prompt java -jar agent.jar ... command. The command parameters should be grabbed from the url of the agent:
http://your_jenkins_url/computer/your_agent_name_or_ip/
I downloaded the agent.jar on my PC, moved it to a desired directory, launched the Command Prompt from the dir where the agent.jar was moved and executed the proposed command with the appropriate parameters.
In my case:
java -jar agent.jar -jnlpUrl http://your_jenkins_url/computer/your_agent_name_or_ip/slave-agent.jnlp -secret 76986574e97c2b635c7076740dc93326eaaf5a3ad30573144915489a1ccfee44 -workDir "D:\jenkins"
This was one of the proposed approaches in the docs here - https://www.jenkins.io/doc/administration/requirements/upgrade-java-guidelines/
Java Web Start Java Web Start has been removed in Java 11. When a
Jenkins controller is running on Java 11, the Java Web Start button
will no longer appear in the Web UI. Agents for a Java 11 Jenkins
server can’t be launched from a *.jnlp file downloaded to a web
browser.
There are no plans to replace this functionality. Connect agents to
Jenkins on Java 11 with plugins like SSH Build Agents Plugin, with
operating system command line calls to java -jar agent.jar, or by
using containers.

Stackdriver GCE JVM monitoring setup problems

I have a custom instance running on Windows Server 2016 where I need to monitor my Java processes.
I setup Stackdriver, installed the monitoring agent and followed this guide for JVM monitoring https://cloud.google.com/monitoring/agent/plugins/jvm
However no matter what I do I can not see any of my processes when setting up an Alerting policy within Stackdriver's console.
There are 2 steps in the guide I am unsure how to follow:
On your VM instance, download jvm-sun-hotspot.conf from the GitHub configuration repository and place it in the directory
/opt/stackdriver/collectd/etc/collectd.d/
Where exactly do I place the .conf file?
Edit the downloaded configuration file and replace JMX_PORT by the port on which your JVM is configured to allow JMX connections.
How do I get the port?
Sorry if this seems obvious but I'm pretty new to this.
Thanks in advance for your help.

All the steps and instructions on the JVM plugin page have instructions relevant for linux, and windows is not even mentioned there. So it could be quite possible that the JVM plugin is supported only on linux.
Since your code is already running on a JVM, you might want to consider if it is possible to move your application from a Windows VM to a linux VM.
Enabling the JVM monitoring plugin
Java Virtual Machines are monitored via JMX.
On your VM instance, download jvm-sun-hotspot.conf from the GitHub
configuration repository and place it in the directory
/opt/stackdriver/collectd/etc/collectd.d/:
(cd /opt/stackdriver/collectd/etc/collectd.d/ && curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stackdriver/stackdriver-agent-service-configs/master/etc/collectd.d/jvm-sun-hotspot.conf)
Edit the downloaded configuration file and replace JMX_PORT by the
port on which your JVM is configured to allow JMX connections.
After adding the configuration file, restart the monitoring agent by
running the following command:
sudo service stackdriver-agent restart
Information on other plugin configuration options can be found at
collectd.org.

Browser not visible when running selenium test with jenkins set up with tomcat

We are running jenkins with Tomcat. When we try to run the selenium web driver with a jenkins job, Nothing happens. We are unable to see the browser opening on the jenkins machine but we don't get any errors. On running the same code with eclipse on the same machine, the browser opens up fine.

Most Windows services -- including those run with the option "Allow service to interact with desktop" in Windows XP and Vista -- do not have access to many of the computer's resources, including the console display. This may cause Automated GUI Tests to fail if you are running Apache Tomcat as a Windows Service and are doing any GUI testing.
This limitation can be resolved by not running Tomcat as a Windows Service, but instead through a "Scheduled Task" as an Application that runs at logon. There are several options for doing this, an example would be to run "$TOMCAT_HOME\bin\tomcat5.exe". When setting up the scheduled task in Windows Vista consider choosing the check-box for "Run with highest privileges" from the general tab, as this removes the need to always provide administrator privileges and may resolve other issues as well.

In the case that you are running Jenkins as a windows service, you should either activate the checkbox "Allow service to interact with desktop" on the service, or just run it from the console with "java -jar jenkins.war"

How do I run a Java .jar file as a Windows service on Windows Server 2008?

How do I run a Java .jar file as a Windows service on a Windows 2008 server? I have a jar file called SomeJavaFile.jar located under the C:\SomeDirectory directory on a Windows Server 2008 box. I usually just run this jar manually in the command line with: java –cp SomeJavaFile.jar com.ctg.SomeJavaFile and I let it run 24/7.
The problem with our Windows Server is if it restarts I need to run it as a service so it will automatically start as a service upon startup, because our processing for Vistakon runs 24/7. I have Googled around and tried to use a service wrapper and the sc.exe command to create the service.
I put the wrapper service.exe in the C:\SomeDirectory\. I use the following command to create it: sc.exe SomeJavaService binPath= “C:\SomeDirectory\service.exe \”java –jar C:\SomeDirectory\SomeJavaFile.jar\”” type= own start= auto error= ignore. This creates the SomeJavaService service correctly but when I try to start it I get an error that says the service on Local Computer started then stopped.
Some services stop automatically if they are not in use by other services or programs. Do I need to alter my sc.exe command to have the exact previous working command line maybe, by adding in the com.ctg.SomeJavaFile? So should I change This jar should just run in the background and constantly poll/ping the C:/poll directory then if there is data present it processes the data and sends an export file to another directory.
I have used this same .jar file for years successfully and it hasn't changed, but I cannot get it to run as a Windows service. This is the site I use to get the service wrapper http://code.google.com/p/simple-service-wrapper/. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

"winsw" is the standalone version of the Windows Service installer shipping with the Glassfish Java EE reference implementation.
Works well, but is not a fully polished product - I have used it for exactly this purpose for a couple of years. Requires .NET in some recent version on the Windows machine.
https://github.com/kohsuke/winsw

I think that the best bet would be wrap your java app with Procrun of Apache Commons Daemon .
Procrun is a set of applications that allow Windows users to wrap
(mostly) Java applications (e.g. Tomcat) as a Windows service.
The service can be set to automatically start when the machine boots
and will continue to run with no user logged onto the machine.

As per my analysis,
The Idle Solution will be writing a VC++ (.net) Windows Service creation program to launch the .bat (that triggers the jar file)/.exe as a System service with all the required call back methods to SCM.
Note : 1. Wrapping the process with sc.exe / srvany.exe would not work as it does not have any call back process to the SCM (Service Control Manager). 2. And java service Wrapper is a third party API (many are LGPL licensed).

If you start your Java code from commandline by using java -j some.jar does it run until you terminate the program, or does it stop by itself?
There needs to be a NON-Deamon Thread, that is running all the time. A JVM will terminate, if there is no thread running, that is not flagged as daemon.
If you have a little budget, buy an installer tool. I use instll4j. With that tool, you can create service launcher and install them during instllation.

The following solution is working fine for me having OpenFire Connection Manager (which is a jar file) running as service on Windows Server.
Download and install the Non-Sucking Service Manager
I didn't use the batch made by OpenFire team, because it didn't work for me (dependencies not found error...) So, make a batch file with the following code :
#ECHO OFF
cd /D "E:\connection_manager\lib"
java -jar startup.jar
and save it as cm_startup.bat in the bin folder of connection manager.
After that you can create the service with NSSM.
So, open a cmd.exe and run the following command :
nssm install ConnManager "E:\connection_manager\lib\cm_startup.bat"
.
Doc & examples
More documentation and examples for the Non-Sucking Service Manager here : https://nssm.cc/usage Actually NSSM as a lot of options available.
Here is a more complexe example :
nssm install solr "%JavaExe%" -Dsolr.solr.home="\"%CD%\solr"\"
-Djetty.home="\"%CD%"\" -Djetty.logs="\"%CD%\logs"\" -cp
"\"%CD%\lib\*.jar"\";"\"%CD%\start.jar"\" -jar "\"%CD%\start.jar"\"

How do you run jvisualvm.exe under the local system account under Windows Server 2003?

I am running GlassFish 3.0.1 as a windows service under Windows Server 2003 with Java 1.6 u 20, and am generally happy.
I would like to be able to use VisualVM on this JVM and used Unable to use JConsole with Tomcat running as windows service as a starting point, but starting with
PsTools\PsExec.exe -i -s "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_20\bin\jvisualvm.exe"
results in a jvisualvm.exe and a nbexec.exe process showing up in Task Manager with SYSTEM as the user but I do not see any GUI from the program as I do when I run it manually as myself. I am logged in with Remote Desktop from Windows 7 in case that makes any difference.
Other interesting points:
at 10:55 /interactive cmd.exe
reports a new job has been added, but does not open a CMD window at 10.55.
The description of how to register VisualVM as a service reports the service to start but no GUI shows up. http://blogs.oracle.com/nbprofiler/entry/monitoring_java_processes_running_as
Have anybody gotten this to run under Windows Server 2003?

The way I'm able to get this to work is to make sure that you remote desktop to the server's "console" session.
Simply put, when you open mstsc.exe append the text " /admin" to the computer name you are trying to connect to. For instance, if you were trying to connect to a server called "FOO", then in the Computer name text box in mstsc.exe, you would enter "FOO /admin".
After connecting and logging in to the server, you can execute your PsExec command. You should then see Visual VM with the GlassFish process you are trying to connect to.
For more info about connecting to the console session with remote desktop in Windows, have a look at the "How to Connect to the Console" section http://support.microsoft.com/kb/278845.
Also, for those looking for PsExec.exe, you can get it from the PsTools package from Microsoft at technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx.