Cannot expose Jenkins externally

I'm hosting jenkins on windows (historical reasons) Just updated it from 1.620 to 2.62

Everything works as expected, except the tiny details that I cannot access it anymore. Only accessing it from host works.

I found numerous posts about it and they all suggested changing startup params to set:

--httpListenAddress=0.0.0.0

or

--httpListenAddress=HOST

I've tried both solutions, same result. Jenkins works when accessed from the host by:

• 127.0.0.1
• 10.0.1.11 (internal ip)
• x.x.x.x (external ip)
• HOST

but doesn't work when accessed from any other machine.

I've checked firewall and azure settings. Other service (nexus:8081) is accessible as expected. Changing port to 8080 didn't help.

that's jenkins.xml

<service> <id>jenkins</id> <name>Jenkins</name> <description>This service runs Jenkins continuous integration system.
</description> <env name="JENKINS_HOME" value="%BASE%"/> <env name="HTTP_HOST" value="HOST.cloudapp.net"/> <executable>%JAVA_HOME%\jre\bin\java</executable> <arguments>-Xrs -Xmx512M -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -Dhudson.lifecycle=hudson.lifecycle.WindowsServiceLifecycle -jar "%BASE%\jenkins.war" --httpPort=80 --httpListenAddress="%HTTP_HOST%" --webroot="%BASE%\war"</arguments> <logmode>rotate</logmode> <onfailure action="restart" />
</service>

that's jenkins log

INFO: Started w.@1750fbeb{/,file:///E:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Jenkins/war/,AVAILABLE}{E:\Program Files (x86)\Jenkins\war}
May 25, 2017 2:17:51 AM org.eclipse.jetty.server.AbstractConnector doStart
INFO: Started ServerConnector@7ae0a9ec{HTTP/1.1,[http/1.1]}{HOST.cloudapp.net:80}
May 25, 2017 2:17:51 AM org.eclipse.jetty.server.Server doStart
INFO: Started @4534ms
May 25, 2017 2:17:51 AM winstone.Logger logInternal
INFO: Winstone Servlet Engine v4.0 running: controlPort=disabled
May 25, 2017 2:17:54 AM jenkins.InitReactorRunner$1 onAttained
INFO: Started initialization
May 25, 2017 2:17:55 AM jenkins.InitReactorRunner$1 onAttained
INFO: Listed all plugins
(removed few lines about ruby failing)
INF/
May 25, 2017 2:18:04 AM jenkins.InitReactorRunner$1 onTaskFailed
SEVERE: Failed Loading plugin ruby-runtime v0.12 (ruby-runtime)
May 25, 2017 2:18:40 AM hudson.WebAppMain$3 run
INFO: Jenkins is fully up and running

when httpListenAddress was 0.0.0.0 log was:

INFO: Started ServerConnector@7ae0a9ec{HTTP/1.1,[http/1.1]}{0.0.0.0:80}

2 Answers

so turns out this question has nothing to do with Jenkins. So I apologize anyone you tried answering. (Correct setting is either using the default value for httpListenAddress or setting it to --httpListenAddress=0.0.0.0)

It was windows firewall. For old jenkis - 1.620 firewall had a rule for Java 6 and port 80. New jenkins is using Java 8 which was blocked.

Changing firewall rules fixed the problem.

For anybody trying to install Jenkins on Windows in a PowerShell script, this is how to tell the firewall to open the port:

New-NetFirewallRule -Name jenkins -DisplayName 'Jenkins' -Enabled True -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -Action Allow -LocalPort 8080