Jenkins test fails to open Excel

[GI D]

My Devs are complaining that, on a fresh installation of Jenkins 1.609, there is a build-test that apparently tries to load  some data using Excel, and it fails with:

Can't connect to X11 window server using 'localhost:11.0' as the value of the DISPLAY variable.

I wonder how Jenkins, as it runs inside Tomcat, can even know where (what client system) to try to open a windowing application on.

In any case, does anyone have a clue as to how to resolve this?

Thanks in advance,

George

[Mark Waite]

There are Jenkins plugins (like the xvnc plugin, xvfb plugin) that will allow a job to request a virtual frame buffer to be used during tests that require a display.  That message may indicate that the plugin is not installed or is not working as expected.

Jenkins 1.609 is many, many years out of date.  You should plan an update to a current version to resolve known security issues, have access to new features, and have a better chance of answers from the Jenkins community

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to jenkinsci-use...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-users/66385f2f-d2ad-4443-995b-9e5f285b1a43n%40googlegroups.com.

[GI D]

Thanks Mark,

This Jenkins installation is a straight-up copy of the current production one that does not have any such plugin, and where this very test runs OK, as I'm told.

Yes I know 1.609 is very old, but it's the Dev team that has to make the decision to upgrade.

[Mark Waite]

On Fri, Jul 9, 2021 at 9:33 PM GI D  wrote:

Thanks Mark,

This Jenkins installation is a straight-up copy of the current production one that does not have any such plugin, and where this very test runs OK, as I'm told.

Thanks for clarification.  That likely means that the Jenkins installation is not quite a complete copy of the current production one.  For example, the current production one probably has an X server running and accepting requests on localhost.  The new one either is not running an X server or is not accepting requests to the X server from localhost.  An X server running and accepting requests is not really something that Jenkins provides (at least not without the Xvnc or Xvfb plugins), but seems like it must exist on the production server (or those requests would not be satisfied).

[GI D]

Thanks Mark,

I see that on both servers /usr/bin/X is running, with the exact same arguments. What I notice is that the console of this new server (which is a VM) is black, so I rebooted it, and will try the build a 2nd time. This new server is running CentOS-7, the older one is running Ubuntu 16.04.

[GI D]

The solution was to unset the DISPLAY environment variable before starting Jenkins. This issue can be closed.