Symptoms

• A plugin release has been announced (“plugin X version y.z”) but it is not available in the Update Center in my instance.

Diagnosis/Treatment

IMPORTANT : In case a certain plugin is not available via Update Center, do not install/upgrade via Advanced Tab > Upload plugin without CloudBees’ agreement. Manual Upload could break your instance because of dependency mismatches among other plugins and/or core incompatibility.

The following points need to be checked in order to identify the root cause. They are valid for installed/existing plugins in your instance as well as new ones (a fresh plugin installation).

1. Check first if your instance is connected to a Custom Update Center (UC) from a Operation Center. If so, “plugin X version y.z” needs to be promoted in order Client/Managed Master can install it. In the case that it has been promoted but it is still not available, please click on Check Now on the Advance Properties tab in the Plugin Manager to force an update.

2. A new plugin releases should be published on the official sites:

• For OSS plugins, please check on the Jenkins IO plugin page. Note: It has been reported cases that release seems to be tagged but it has not been published for some reason.
  • For CB plugins, please check on the CloudBees Product Release Notes.

Note: Check the id, version and requiredCore attributes.

3. There are plugins that cannot be installed in any of their versions because they have been blacklisted by jenkins.io.

4. Just for CloudBees Jenkins since 2.x, check if your instance is enrolled or not in the CloudBees Assurance Program (CAP). Please see Plugins missing from Update Center after installing CloudBees Jenkins v2.x

5. The plugin releases version should be available from your specific Update Center Service according to your core, product and enrolment into the CloudBees Assurance Program (CAP)

• For OSS Update Center: http://updates.jenkins-ci.org/update-center.json. It always points to the latest Jenkins version.
  • For CloudBees’s Update Center, depending on the product:
    • A. 1CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise - Managed Master
      • A.1 CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cje-mm/update-center.json?id=cap-cje-mm&version=<VERSION>
      • A.2 No CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/cje-mm/update-center.json?id=cje-mm&version=<VERSION>
    • B. CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise - Operations Center
      • B.1 CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cje-oc/update-center.json?id=cap-cje-oc&version=<VERSION>
      • B.2 No CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/cje-oc/update-center.json?id=cje-oc&version=<VERSION>
    • C. CloudBees Jenkins Team
      • C.1 CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cjt/update-center.json?id=cap-cjt&version=<VERSION>
      • C.2 No CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/cjt/update-center.json?id=cjt&version=<VERSION>
    • D. CloudBees Jenkins Platform - Client Master
      • D.1 CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cje/update-center.json?version=<VERSION>
      • D.2 No CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center.json?id=jenkins-enterprise&version=<VERSION>
    • E. CloudBees Jenkins Platform - Operations Center
      • E.1 CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cjoc/update-center.json?version=<VERSION>
      • E.2 No CAP: http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/operations-center/update-center.json?id=jenkins-operations-center&version=<VERSION>

Notes:

1. Check if the information provided on the official sites taken in step 1 matches with the metadata on the JSON service (id, version and requiredCore).
2. A new release of a OSS plugin could not be available in CloudBees Update Centers, if it is not available on the Jenkins Update Center at first.
3. Differences on fixed and rolling are identified on the respective versions. Since Jenkins 2.7.19 and onwards new coordinates are added, referring x to rolling (i.e. 2.7.19.x) vs 0.x to fixed (i.e. 2.7.19.0.x).

Example Scenario

Scenario description: CJE 2.7.20.2-rolling instance needs EC2 plugin to be updated from 1.35 to 1.36 but in the Plugin Manager does not offer the option:

Resolution:

1. At the moment of writing this article, the wiki page of the EC2 plugin looked like:

So, at this point, we can tell regarding the EC2 plugin (id: ec2) that:

• latest release is 1.36
• required core is 1.651.3. So this requirement is met because the example scenario is on 2.7.20.2

As it is an OSS plugin, GitHub repo of the plugin also can be checked:

Seeing this matching (wiki-GitHub), it can be told that latest release of the plugin has been done successfully and it is available on Jenkins Update Center.

2. Then, "ec2" (plugin id) is used for searching the plugin metadata on the service http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cje/update-center.json?version=2.7.20.2.

For improving visualization, we move the analyzed EC2 metadata towards a JSON editor

So, the latest plugin release available on the Plugin Manager according to the core is 2.7.20.2 rolling is 1.35

3. Finally, it is time to check if the Beekeeper Upgrade Assistant is activated. Going to $JenkinsURL/beekeeper/ we noticed that is enabled.

If this is a newer instance you will need to do one more step to see if it is enabled where you go to the beekeeper link:

Then click the sidebar link called CAP Configuration where you will find the same UI again:

So, without restarting the instance, we disabled it (do not forget to click on Save)…

… and that moment, the Update Center endpoint changes from http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center/envelope-cje/update-center.json to http://jenkins-updates.cloudbees.com/update-center.json, it gets outside the “envelope”.

And without being enrolled in the CloudBees Assurance Program, latest released of the plugin is available under the Updates tab so.. for this specific scenario the root cause was found: ec2 is not available yet for CJE 2.7.20.2-rolling under CAP.