How to create a local mirror of public Jenkins update site?

Question

We are running Jenkins on a server that does not have internet access (even through proxy). Installing and keeping the Jenkins installation up-to-date is a pain!

My idea

Answer 1

For generating update site (update-center.json) you can use https://github.com/jenkins-infra/backend-update-center2 project

My steps:

1. Generate self signed certificate

    openssl genrsa -out your-update-center.key 1024
    openssl req -new -x509 -days 1095 -key your-update-center.key -out your-update-center.crt

2. put all plugins into your Nexus 2 maven repository
3. Clone and build backend-update-center2 project
4. generate update-center.json

mvn exec:java -Dexec.args="-id default -h /dev/null 
    -o update-center.json -repository ULR_TO_NEXUS_REPO 
    -remoteIndex .index/nexus-maven-repository-index.gz -repositoryName YOUR_REPO_NAME 
    -directLink -pretty -nowiki -key your-update-center.key 
    -certificate your-update-center.crt 
    -root-certificate your-update-center.crt"

3. publish your update-center.json. Has to be accessible via http/https
4. copy generated your-update-center.crt to the JENKINS_HOME/update-center-rootCAs folder
5. "Jenkins → Plugin manage → Advanced → Update site" define link to the published update-center.json

PS. don't forget to generate and publish Nexus 2 nexus-maven-repository-index.gz index file. Use the "Publish the indexes" task for that.

Some additional information about Updater Center you can find at https://github.com/ikedam/backend-update-center2/wiki/How-to-create-your-own-Jenkins-Update-Center