Add more labels to machines

[gibfahn]

I've been thinking about this for a while, but @TimothyGu brought it up in #419 (comment), so it seems time

Is there a way to provide a list of acceptable nodes for Jenkins to choose from randomly (like a load balancer)?

There is a way, we're just not implementing it in our Jenkins instance.

What we do in our (IBM) Jenkins is define a bunch of labels for each machine, so ubuntu1610-x64 would have labels: x64 linux ubuntu ubuntu1610, that way you can just specify linux to get the next available linux (or whatever you want). However we don't currently do that in CI.

What would be ideal is something that autogenerates the labels when a machine connects. Something like this Plugin might be helpful, although that plugin in particular doesn't look like it'll give us all the labels we'd need.

We'd probably want:

• Full label: ubuntu1610-x64
• Arch: x64, ppc64, s390x
• OS (kernel): linux, win, aix, darwin, freebsd, smartos
• Distro: ubuntu: ubuntu, macos
• Distro+version: ubuntu16.10, macos10.12

_{refack: fixed formating}

[TimothyGu]

Would it not be possible to label all machines manually? I assume the Jenkins would skip the currently offline machines while looking for a machine with such a label?

[refack]

Would it not be possible to label all machines manually?

Possible but laborious (there are currently 150 machines), and error prone...
I'm looking into patching the PlatformLabel plugin...

[gibfahn]

Would it not be possible to label all machines manually?

We also don't currently automate the adding of a newly provisioned machine to Jenkins. If we had a script for that, we could add the labels there.

I assume the Jenkins would skip the currently offline machines while looking for a machine with such a label?

Correct

[refack]

We also don't currently automate the adding of a newly provisioned machine to Jenkins. If we had a script for that, we could add the labels there.

There's a chicken&egg problem, we need to register the machine in J to get the secret, and we need to secret to ansible a machine. Maybe we need:

1. add machine to inventory
2. bootstrap.playbook (also useful for updates)
3. inventory -> jenkins -> secret list
4. setupJenkinsWorker.playbook

[gibfahn]

we need to register the machine in J to get the secret

This is the bit that needs automating. Hopefully there's an api equivalent to:

• Log into ci.nodejs.org
• Click the Create machine button
• Download secret.

[Trott]

Closing due to long period of inactivity. Feel free to re-open if this is a thing. I'm just trying to close stuff that has been ignored for sufficiently long that it seems likely it's not something we're going to get to.