Jenkins : Thanks for using OSX Installer

This page is a landing page for those who have installed Jenkins via its OS X installer

The installer sets up Jenkins as a launch daemon, listening on port 8080. (If you want to know more about launchd and daemons, see here and here.)

Changing boot configuration

The launch daemon picks up the command line options from a standard preferences file, /Library/Preferences/org.jenkins-ci.plist. If the file does not exist, built-in defaults are used. The preference files are manipulated using the standard utility defaults.

  • To view all settings in the file, run: defaults read /Library/Preferences/org.jenkins-ci
  • To get the value of a single setting, run: defaults read /Library/Preferences/org.jenkins-ci SETTING
  • To set the value of a setting, run: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/org.jenkins-ci SETTING VALUE
  • For more information, see man defaults

See Starting and Accessing Jenkins for various command line options that Jenkins support.

Supported Settings

The list of settings supported by the Jenkins launch daemon (see documentation):

  • prefix
  • httpPort
  • httpListenAddress
  • httpsPort
  • httpsListenAddress
  • ajp13Port
  • ajp13ListenAddress

Additionally, you can set also these:

  • war (Full path name to jenkins.war file.)
  • heapSize (Passed to java command-line -Xmx parameter.)
  • permGen (Passed to java command-line -XX:MaxPermSize parameter.) (SINCE 1.455?)
  • JENKINS_HOME (Full path to JENKINS_HOME directory where Jenkins keeps its files)

Starting/stopping the service

  • To manually start the daemon: sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jenkins-ci.plist
  • To manually stop the daemon: sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.jenkins-ci.plist

Inheriting your existing Hudson/Jenkins installation

If you'd like your new installation to take over your existing Jenkins/Hudson data, copy your old data directory into the new JENKINS_HOME directory.

Java and OS X 10.9 Mavericks or 10.10 Yosemite

Oracle Java 8 on Mavericks or Yosemite needs Apple's Java 1.6 to function. However, all of the symlinks in /usr/bin point to Java 1.6, so when a Jenkins tries to run via /Library/Application Support/Jenkins/jenkins-runner.sh, it launches using Java 1.6. To run under Java 8, you need to do the following: 

  1. Install Apple's Java from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572
  2. Install Oracle Java 8
  3. Edit jenkins-runner.sh: 
    1. Add the line: 
      export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home"
    2. Change the last two lines to read: 
      echo "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/bin/java" $javaArgs -jar "$war" $args
      exec "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home/bin/java" $javaArgs -jar "$war" $args
      

Jenkins will now run using Java 8. 

Uninstall Jenkins

To uninstall Jenkins service from your Mac OS X computer, execute uninstall script from terminal:

'/Library/Application Support/Jenkins/Uninstall.command'