JX

JX is a command line tool for installing and using Jenkins X

Installing

Check out how to install jx

Getting Help

To find out the available commands type:

jx

Or to get help on a specific command, say, create then type:

jx help create

You can also browse the jx command reference documentation

Getting Started

Please check out the Getting Started Guide on how to

• create new kubernetes clusters with Jenkins X
• install Jenkins X on existing clusters

Then what to do next when you have Jenkins X installed

Reference

• Command Line Reference

Opening Consoles

To open the Jenkins console try:

jx console

Or to open other consoles

jx open foo

If you do not know the name

jx open

Tail logs

To tail the logs of anything running on kubernetes (jenkins or your own applications) type

jx logs

Which prompts you for the deployment to log then tails the logs of the newest pod for an app.

You can filter the list of deployments via:

jx logs -f cheese

Then if there's only one deployment with a name that contains cheese then it'll tail the logs of the latest pod or will prompt you to choose the exact deployment to use.

Remote shells

You can open a remote shell inside any pods container via the rsh command

jx rsh

Or to open a shell inside a pod named foo

jx rsh foo

Pass -c to specify the container name. e.g. to open a shell in a maven build pod

jx rsh -c maven maven

Importing or Creating apps

To import an application from the current directory:

jx import

Or to create a new Spring Boot application from scratch:

jx create spring

e.g. to create a new WebMVC and Spring Boot Actuator microservice try this:

jx create spring -d web -d actuator

If you have a Maven Archetype you would like to create then use:

jx create archetype

Starting builds

To start a pipeline using a specific name try

jx start pipeline myorg/myrepo

Or to pick the pipeline to start:

jx start pipeline

If you know part of the name of the pipeline to run you can filter the list via:

jx start pipeline -f thingy

You can start and tail the build log via:

jx start pipeline -t

Viewing Apps and Environments

To view environments for a team

jx get env

To view the application versions across environments

jx get version

Manual promotions

Typically we setup Environments to use automatic promotion so that the CI / CD pipelines will automatically promote versions through the available Environments using the CI / CD Pipeline.

However if you wish to manually promote a version to an environment you can use the following command:

jx promote myapp -e prod 

Or if you wish to use a custom namespace

jx promote myapp -n my-dummy-namespace

Switching Environments

The jx CLI tool uses the same kubernetes cluster and namespace context as kubectl.

You can switch Environments via:

jx env

Or change it via

jx env staging
jx env prod

To display the current environment without trying to change it:

jx env -b

To view all the environments type:

jx get env

You can create or edit environments too

jx create env

jx edit env staging

You can switch namespaces in the same way via

jx ns

or

jx ns awesome-staging    

Switching Clusters

If you have multiple kubernetes clusters (e.g. you are using GKE and minikube together) then you can switch between them via

jx ctx

In the same way. Or via

jx ctx minikube

Note that changing the namespace ,environment or cluster changes the current context for ALL shells!

Sub shells

So if you want to work temporarily with, say, the production cluster we highly recommend you use a sub shell for that.

jx shell my-prod-context

Or to pick the context to use for the sub shell

jx shell 

Then your bash prompt will be updated to reflect that you are in a different context and/or namespace. Any changes to the namespace, environment or context will be local to the current shell only!

Setting your prompt

You can use the jx prompt to configure your CLI prompt to display the current team and environment you are working within

	# Enable the prompt for bash
	PS1="[\u@\h \W \$(jx prompt)]\$ "

	# Enable the prompt for zsh
	PROMPT='$(jx prompt)'$PROMPT

Note that the prompt is updated automatically for you via the jx shell command too

Bash completion

On a Mac to enable bash completion try:

jx completion bash > ~/.jx/bash
source ~/.jx/bash   

Or try:

source <(jx completion bash)

For more help try:

jx help completion bash

Addons

We are adding a number of addon capabilities to Jenkins X. To add or remove addons use the jx create addon or jx delete addon commands

For example to add the gitea git server to your Jenkins X installation try:

jx create addon gitea

This will:

• install the gitea helm chart
• add gitea as a git server (via the jx create git server gitea command)
• create a new user in gitea (via the jx create git user -n gitea command)
• create a new git API token in gitea (via the jx create git token -n gitea -p password username command)

Troubleshooting

We have tried to collate common issues here with work arounds. If your issue isn't listed here please let us know.

Cannot create cluster minikube

If you are using a Mac then hyperkit is the best VM driver to use - but does require you to install a recent Docker for Mac first. Maybe try that then retry jx create cluster minikube?

If your minikube is failing to startup then you could try:

minikube delete
rm -rf ~/.minikube

If the rm fails you may need to do:

sudo rm -rf ~/.minikube

Now try jx create cluster minikube again - did that help? Sometimes there are stale certs or files hanging around from old installations of minikube that can break things.

Sometimes a reboot can help in cases where virtualisation goes wrong ;)

Otherwise you could try follow the minikube instructions

• install minikube
• run minikube start

Minkube and hyperkit: Could not find an IP address

If you are using minikube on a mac with hyperkit and find minikube fails to start with a log like:

Temporary Error: Could not find an IP address for 46:0:41:86:41:6e
Temporary Error: Could not find an IP address for 46:0:41:86:41:6e
Temporary Error: Could not find an IP address for 46:0:41:86:41:6e
Temporary Error: Could not find an IP address for 46:0:41:86:41:6e

It could be you have hit this issue in minikube and hyperkit.

The work around is to try the following:

rm ~/.minikube/machines/minikube/hyperkit.pid

Then try again. Hopefully this time it will work!

Cannot access services on minikube

When running minikube locally jx defaults to using nip.io as a way of using nice-isn DNS names for services and working around the fact that most laptops can't do wildcard DNS. However sometimes nip.io has issues and does not work.

To avoid using nip.io you can do the following:

Edit the file ~/.jenkins-x/cloud-environments/env-minikube/myvalues.yaml and add the following content:

expose:
  Args:
    - --exposer
    - NodePort
    - --http
    - "true"

Then re-run jx install and this will switch the services to be exposed on node ports instead of using ingress and DNS.

So if you type:

jx open

You'll see all the URs of the form http://$(minikube ip):somePortNumber which then avoids going through nip.io - it just means the URLs are a little more cryptic using magic port numbers rather than simple host names.

Other issues

Please let us know and see if we can help? Good luck!

Contributing

If you're looking to build from source or get started hacking on jx, please see the hacking guide for more information.