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Creating test sites in Jenkins

Log in to Jenkins

On the home page, go to build_test_instance

Jenkins home page

Build test instance​

This lets you build a new test instance, or update the code on an existing instance.

The main things you'll use on the page are:

  • Build with Parameters - build a new test site or update an existing one
  • Build history - view logs from previous builds / current build
  • test_instance_report - view currently live test instances, and extend their life or terminate them

Jenkins build test instance

Build with Parameters​

The descriptions of the parameters are thorough so read them. Some highlights of what you need to do here:

  • give it a name
  • DASHBOARD_SERVICES_TAG - you normally want to build a specific branch so get the commit you want the site to be based on from GitHub / CircleCI / ... e.g. dc7261b
  • LIFESPAN_HOURS - only as long as you need. This sets a tag on the EC2 instance called terminate_after, you can update this tag manually for special cases
  • SKIP_TERRAFORM - use when updating an existing test site
  • RESTORE_SAVED_DATA / KEEP_DATA_ON_TERMINATION - if you want data to be kept even after the instance is terminated, set keep on termination, and next time you create a site with the same name, set restore saved data.

Building from feature branches​

If you are building from dev/staging/main then there is nothing special to do. If you are building from a feature branch then there is an extra step to take because CircleCI doesn't create the containers and deploy the frontend for feature branches. If you run the build without this step you will see the following error in the logs. - Unable to find image '5app/appbase:dc7261b' locally

To build the containers and deploy the frontend

  • go to pipelines in CircleCI
  • filter to project hub branch your feature branch
  • click the Trigger Pipeline button
  • In the parameters, set deploy to test, no other changes needed as the other settings are ignored
  • Run pipeline

This will create a new job which just builds the containers and deploys the frontend

CircleCI params

Updating an existing test site with code changes​

Call build with parameters again using the same name. Tick SKIP_TERRAFORM to speed things up

Seeing what's going on​

When a build is running / finished, click on Console Output to see what's going on

Connecting to the new site​

Look at the bottom of the console output for details of how to connect to the site.

The default super user account is dev+admin@5app.com

Extending the life of a test instance​

  • Go to the test_instance_report project
  • Click on Workspace/running_instances.html
  • Click on extend instance life

Terminating instances​

  • Instances are terminated by a job which runs every hour based on the termination tag. There is a termination now button in the test instance report but it doesn't seem to work for me

Security​

These test sites are not as secure as prod and staging, the databases are available over the internet with a weak password. Do not put sensitive data into them.

Jenkins​

Jenkins is hosted on an EC2 instance. It uses the LDAP server for authentication. See the deployment repo for details.