Installing Jenkins for Nightly Build and Testing

At night my computer is busy doing some weird stuff ( Indexing or creating data dealing with excel sheets and much more).

I decided to get more work out of it by using Jenkins (I used Hudson before) as a continuous integration tool server.


Step 1: Download and install Jenkins & Java

I have a Windows XP SP3 desktop . So The first step is downloading the latest stable build from Jenkins home page. ( the setup sucks big time so we use the war ) 
The build used: 1.482.

The above build is not stable yet. So we use Jenkins ver. 1.466.2

Installing Java from the Oracle website : Java Download.
Install Java 1.6.0.17


Step 2: Running Jenkins
Go to the location where you have downloaded the war file.
To start Jenkins we use the following command:
java -jar jenkins.war

Now using a web browser, go to http://localhost:8080/.

 That's it Jenkins is up and running.


The installation was not as smooth as it seem.
I got the following error on the latest build 1.482:

SEVERE: Failed to initialize Jenkins
org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.ReactorException: java.lang.Error
vocationTargetException
        at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor.execute(Reacto
        at jenkins.InitReactorRunner.run(InitReactorRunner
        at jenkins.model.Jenkins.executeReactor(Jenkins.ja
        at jenkins.model.Jenkins.(Jenkins.java:791)
        at hudson.model.Hudson.(Hudson.java:81)
        at hudson.model.Hudson.(Hudson.java:77)
        at hudson.WebAppMain$2.run(WebAppMain.java:214)
Caused by: java.lang.Error: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTa
        at hudson.init.InitializerFinder.invoke(Initialize
        at hudson.init.InitializerFinder$TaskImpl.run(Init
)
        at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor.runTask(Reacto
        at jenkins.model.Jenkins$7.runTask(Jenkins.java:87
        at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor$2.run(Reactor.
        at org.jvnet.hudson.reactor.Reactor$Node.run(React
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.
)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Na
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unk
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
        at hudson.init.InitializerFinder.invoke(Initialize
        ... 8 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.apache.mina.core.service.SimpleIoProcessorP
ocessorPool.java:289)
        at org.apache.mina.core.service.SimpleIoProcessorP
cessorPool.java:229)
        at org.apache.mina.core.service.SimpleIoProcessorP
cessorPool.java:123)
        at org.apache.mina.core.polling.AbstractPollingIoA
tPollingIoAcceptor.java:125)
        at org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio.NioSocketA
etAcceptor.java:78)
        at org.apache.sshd.SshServer.createAcceptor(SshSer
        at org.apache.sshd.SshServer.start(SshServer.java:
        at org.jenkinsci.main.modules.sshd.SSHD.start(SSHD
        at org.jenkinsci.main.modules.sshd.SSHD.init(SSHD.
        ... 13 more
←[0m←[33mSep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM org.jenkinsci.main.modul
pl onBeforeShutdown
WARNING: Failed to shutdown SSHD
java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.apache.sshd.SshServer.stop(SshServer.java:3
        at org.jenkinsci.main.modules.sshd.SSHD.stop(SSHD.
        at org.jenkinsci.main.modules.sshd.ItemListenerImp
mListenerImpl.java:20)
        at jenkins.model.Jenkins.cleanUp(Jenkins.java:2568
        at hudson.WebAppMain$2.run(WebAppMain.java:230)
←[0mSep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping external-monitor-job
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping ldap
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping pam-auth
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping ant
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping javadoc
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping subversion
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping translation
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping cvs
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping ssh-slaves
Sep 23, 2012 12:29:32 PM hudson.PluginWrapper stop
INFO: Stopping maven-plugin

Solution: This is a bug. The workaround is delete the.jenkins folder which is present at C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME> and start Jenkins again.