Windows VM + interactive (selenium)

[quimicefa]

Describe your use-case which is not covered by existing documentation.

This is not an issue / bug but an open question to the plugin users community.

Does anyone use this plugin to create new agent to execute selenium there?

In my environment, we have a lot of jenkins jobs running on windows/chrome that AFAIK require interactive access to the runner. This way the selenium plugin can capture de windows UI.

Is this something that we can get using this plugin? because if i'm not wrong the windows runners are connected to master using SSH, not RDP.

Reference any relevant documentation, other materials or issues/pull requests that can be used for inspiration.

No response

Are you interested in contributing to the documentation?

Yes, but I need to know if it's possible.

[timja]

The Jenkins project itself does it like this using remote web driver:
https://github.com/jenkinsci/acceptance-test-harness/blob/master/Jenkinsfile

https://github.com/jenkinsci/acceptance-test-harness/blob/master/ci.sh

[tibco-postman]

Possibly related comment: #778 (comment)

[rrberger]

Yes, this is definitely possible.

We use Jenkins agents with this plugin specifically for this 10x a day! If you want to interactively test the Windows UI with interactive (non-headless) web tests, you'll need to use the JNLP connectivity method (Connect to Controller). We basically spin up an agent from an image that we build with Packer nightly, with an Azure Virtual Machine Scale-set, have it check into Jenkins using the initialization script from the cloud template, and then run our Selenium test pipelines.

The only real caveat that isn't so great is having to use a auto-login for JNLP to properly connect + interactive desktop to function. There may be a better way to do this, but from the testing + use cases I've used this for over the last 6ish years, this is where I've landed.

If you have any particular questions, let me know.

[tibco-postman]

@cyclelabs-ryanberger I'd be interested in understanding more details on how you achieve the auto-login.
We've tried using sysinternals autologon tool built into the template, but it seems as if this is deleted as part of the generalization process.

As you say, we require an interactive desktop session so we somehow need to login a user to get a desktop and then connect to the controller from that session.

[timja]

Can't you install / set that up in the init script?

[tibco-postman]

Sysinternals autologon is for having a machine automatically login a given user on machine startup.
In this case, the template generalization seem to remove the configuration of what user to login, so it does not work.

Adding configuration to the init script won't help since at that point, the VM is already started...

So, it'd be interesting to understand what way is used by @cyclelabs-ryanberger to auto login and to run the agent connect command within that logged in session.

[rrberger]

@tibco-postman @quimicefa

To use JNLP for interactive testing (this is required) you need to alter your Cloud template to use Launch agent by connecting it to controller as your Launch method. This is what the agent.jar is, which is used in the initialization script below.

Now, here is my initialization script, scrubbed of any sensitive values. Basically, I am automating the registry config for Auto Login to be true in the init script. I then automate downloading the agent.jar and then I set it to execute as a scheduled task upon login. This way, at the end when the restart triggers, the VM will come back up and check into Jenkins as the auto-logged-in user using JNLP. Then, I run interactive web tests + WinApp driver tests.

I hope this helps. I've been using the VM Agent plugin to create/spawn up interactive testing agents for about 6 years now. This is the easiest way I've sorted out how to do what you are asking.

I am aware you have to store plain text passwords; and yes that does suck and it is not ideal. Our entire environment is air-gapped off and the agents are ephemeral so it's not an issue for us. As @timja mentioned, the ARM limitation is pretty limiting for this entire process because right now through the plug in, we do not have the ability to send customer parameters since they're using a non-customizable ARM template. If we could send in custom parameters, we'd be able to send some of these securely.

PS: $vmName and $secret come from the ARM template and are already sent over when using the Azure VM Agent plugin.

Let me know if you have any questions.

# Autologon configuration
Write-Output "Configuring Autologon for agentadmin..."
$RegPath = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon"
$DefaultUsername = "autologin_username"
$DefaultPassword = "autologin_password"
Set-ItemProperty $RegPath "AutoAdminLogon" -Value "1" -type String
Set-ItemProperty $RegPath "DefaultUsername" -Value "$DefaultUsername" -type String
Set-ItemProperty $RegPath "DefaultPassword" -Value "$DefaultPassword" -type String
reg.exe ADD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows /v NoInteractiveServices /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

# Jenkins agent setup
Write-Output "Downloading Jenkins agent and configuring startup..."
$vmname = $args[1]
$secret = $args[2]

# Download the Jenkins agent.jar
mkdir c:\jenkins -Force
cd "c:\jenkins"
curl.exe -sO "http://your_jenkins_server:8080/jnlpJars/agent.jar"

Write-Output "Creating Jenkins agent batch file..."
$scriptContent = @"
"C:\Program Files\Eclipse Adoptium\latest\bin\java.exe" -Xms2g -Xmx8g -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar `"c:\jenkins\agent.jar`" -url `"http://your_jenkins_server:8080/`" -name `"$vmname`" -secret `"$secret`" -workDir `"c:\jenkins`"
"@
$scriptContent | Out-File -FilePath "c:\jenkins\jenkins-agent.bat" -Encoding ASCII

# Scheduled Task for Jenkins agent
Write-Output "Creating scheduled task for Jenkins agent..."
$A = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute "c:\jenkins\jenkins-agent.bat"
$T = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -AtLogon
$P = New-ScheduledTaskPrincipal "$env:COMPUTERNAME\$DefaultUsername"
$S = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet
$D = New-ScheduledTask -Action $A -Principal $P -Trigger $T -Settings $S
Register-ScheduledTask T1 -InputObject $D

Write-Output "Jenkins agent task registered."

# Stop logging and restart computer
Write-Output "Stopping transcript and restarting computer..."
Stop-Transcript
Restart-Computer

[tibco-postman]

Thanks a ton @cyclelabs-ryanberger - it works like a charm!

[rrberger]

@tibco-postman I am glad that it helped you! This is something near and dear to my heart and honestly; sharing the knowledge makes me happy. It took me countless hours to dial this in to a way that worked consistently and in a timely fashion. Enjoy!