When setting up a shared agent on Windows we receive Unable to launch the Application dialog

Article ID:204624424
1 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

When launching a Windows shared agent we get "Unable to launch the application" with a java.lang.NullPointerException

service_NPE.png
application_error.png

Environment

  • CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise

  • Windows 2012

Resolution

In one customers case their agent names had spaces (e.g. "EXAMPLE AGENT NAME")

https://jenkins_url/computer/EXAMPLE%20AGENT%20NAME/slave-agent.jnlp

The %20 sequence used to URL-encode space can confuse Windows javaws, as the % character is used on Windows for environment variable.

Removing spaces from the name resolves this issue.