Boot

Overview

Jenkins X Boot uses the following approach:

• Create your Kubernetes cluster using Terraform. Please check out our Cloud Providers Guide on our recommendations for your cloud provider. To verify you can communicate correctly with your Kubernetes cluster run:

  kubectl get ns
  

• Run the jx boot command:

  jx boot
  

You will now be prompted for any missing parameters required to install, such as your admin user/password, the Pipeline git user and token etc.

Then Jenkins X should be installed and set up on your Kubernetes cluster.

About jx boot

The jx boot interprets the boot pipeline using your local jx binary. The underlying pipeline for booting Jenkins X can later be run inside Kubernetes via Tekton. If ever something goes wrong with Tekton you can always jx boot again to get things back up and running (e.g., if someone accidentally deletes your cluster).

Pre and Post Validation

Before any installation is attempted, Boot runs the jx step verify preinstall command to check everything looks OK. It will also check whether your installed package versions are within the upper and lower version limits.

Once the installation has completed the jx step verify install command is run to verify your installation is valid.

Changing your installation

At any time you can re-run jx boot to re-apply any changes in your configuration. To do this git clone your development environment git repository, change directory into the git clone and run jx boot. e.g.

git clone https://github.com/myuser/environment-mycluster-dev.git
cd environment-mycluster-dev
jx boot

So just edit anything in the configuration you like and re-run jx boot - whether that’s to add or remove apps, to change parameters or configuration, or upgrade or downgrade versions of dependencies.

Note that you can also just submit a Pull Request on your development git repository which if merged, will trigger a pipeline to run the above commands to apply the changes.

Requirements

There is a file called jx-requirements.yml which is used to specify the logical requirements of your installation; such as:

• what Kubernetes provider to use
• whether to store secrets in the local file system or vault
• if you are using Terraform to manage your cloud resources
• if you wish to use kaniko for container image builds

This is the main configuration file for jx boot where you make most of your changes. You may want to review the jx-requirements.yml file and make any changes you need.

User Interface

If you’re looking for a UI check out Octant the open source web UI for Jenkins X

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