Restore credentials

1 minute read

There are two primary use cases where you may need to move credentials between controllers:

  • Cloning a controller.

  • Moving jobs from a monolithic controller into a smaller team controller.

Manage credentials when cloning a controller

You may need to create a test controller from the backup of a production controller. If you do so, and the controllers are in the same cluster, you may receive errors, and should use the following instructions to resolve the problem:

  1. Sign in to the origin controller and stop the controller.

  2. Using administrative SSH or console access, sign in to the controller and remove the following files:

    • $JENKINS_HOME/license.xml

    • $JENKINS_HOME/operations-center-cloud*

    • $JENKINS_HOME/operations-center-client*

    • $JENKINS_HOME/com.cloudbees.opscenter.client.plugin.OperationsCenterRootAction.xml

  3. Disable security:

    1. Open $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml.

    2. Locate the line <useSecurity>true</useSecurity> and change the value to <useSecurity>false</useSecurity>.

    3. Save $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml.

  4. Start the Jenkins service.

  5. Create a new client controller in the operations center and push the modified configuration in $JENKINS_HOME/config.xml to it.

Manage credentials when moving jobs between controllers

If you are moving a set of jobs from a monolithic controller to a team controller and you receive "duplicate instance" errors:

  1. Stop Jenkins.

  2. Change to the $JENKINS_HOME directory.

  3. Delete the secret.key file.

  4. Delete the license.xml file.

  5. Start Jenkins.

Select in the upper-right corner to navigate to the Manage Jenkins page, and then select Manage License to display your instance ID. You can also go to https://$JENKINS_URL/license to view the instance ID associated with your license.