Launchd is not starting Jenkins server on OS X Yosemite

Question

Under OS X 10.9 Jenkins CI was being automatically started by launchd. After update to 10.10, it is no longer being started.

Jenkins was installed using the OS X installer from jenkins-ci.org. I was running v1.584. After this problem surfaced I reinstalled using v1.585 to no avail.

There is no output in the log file specified in org.jenkins-ci.plist. Syslog has several messages indicating that the org.jenkins-ci service "could not initialize: 14A389: xpcproxy + 14045 [1344][1016C726-9ACF-3A24-9C51-A279F5C6B167]: 0xd".

What's changed in Yosemite that broke jenkins?

Is the "0xd" at the end of the log message an error code?

I tried manually loading and starting via launchctl. No errors were output to the console but jenkins is still not running.

The problem is not unique to Jenkins. I have another launchd item that also fails since the update to 10.10: TrendMicro anti-virus.

Answer 1

Here is the definitive answer.

1. Ensure you have Java installed. The 10.10 installer, at least in my case, removed Apple's Java 6. The installed java must satisfy the /usr/bin/java* links. These point to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands. When installing Oracle Java you need the JDK not the JRE to meet this requirement.

2. chown jenkins /var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log

3. Make sure /var/log/jenkins is owned by jenkins and searchable by anyone (mode 755). It will likely already be in this state.

4. Edit the file /etc/newsyslog.d/jenkins.conf, changing

   /var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log 644 3 * $D0 J

   to

   /var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log jenkins:jenkins 644 3 * $D0 J

   This ensures that new log files created during nightly log rotation are owned by jenkins. If you do not do this, you will need to repeat step 2 every day.

Step 4 of @kjones answer is likely unnecessary as launchd attempts to start jenkins every 10 seconds.

The '0xd' at the end of the log message I posted is indeed the error code: Permission Denied.

What changed in launchd? /var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log is specified as the Standard{Error,Out}Path in org.jenkins-ci.plist. My theory is that prior to Yosemite launchd opened the file and set up STDOUT & STDERR before changing the process owner to "jenkins" and running jenkins-runner.sh. In Yosemite, it seems launchd does not open the file until after it has changed the process ownership, hence "permission denied" when the file is owned by root.