Jenkins slave cannot connect with master: Incorrect acknowledgement sequence

Question

After update of our Jenkins master installation to its latest LTS version 2.46.3 one of its slaves (Windows 7 machine, 32-bit) cannot connect with the master.

The er

Answer 1

The message:

Incorrect acknowledgement sequence ...

happened for me when I had incorrectly configured a value for the Java property hudson.TcpSlaveAgentListener.port as the same port number as the HTTP port used by Jenkins. The TcpSlaveAgentListener javadoc indicates that is a misconfiguration when it says:

Aside from the HTTP endpoint, Jenkins runs TcpSlaveAgentListener that listens on a TCP socket. Historically this was used for inbound connection from agents (hence the name), but over time it was extended and made generic, so that multiple protocols of different purposes can co-exist on the same socket. (emphasis added)

If the HTTP port was 8080 and the hudson.TcpSlaveAgentListener.port was also 8080, then my JNLP agents failed to connect. As soon as I assigned another value to hudson.TcpSlaveAgentListener.port (like 50000) and restarted Jenkins, my JNLP agents were able to connect.

The stack trace on the failing JNLP agent was:

INFO: Trying protocol: JNLP4-connect
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.AckFilterLayer abort
WARNING: [JNLP4-connect connection to agent.example.com/172.16.16.113:8080] Incorrect acknowledgement sequence, expected 0x000341434b got 0x485454502f
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener status
INFO: Protocol JNLP4-connect encountered an unexpected exception
java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.ConnectionRefusalException: Connection closed before acknowledgement sent
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.util.SettableFuture.get(SettableFuture.java:223)
        at hudson.remoting.Engine.innerRun(Engine.java:614)
        at hudson.remoting.Engine.run(Engine.java:474)
Caused by: org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.ConnectionRefusalException: Connection closed before acknowledgement sent
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.AckFilterLayer.onRecvClosed(AckFilterLayer.java:280)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.FilterLayer.abort(FilterLayer.java:164)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.AckFilterLayer.abort(AckFilterLayer.java:130)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.AckFilterLayer.onRecv(AckFilterLayer.java:258)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.ProtocolStack$Ptr.onRecv(ProtocolStack.java:668)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.NetworkLayer.onRead(NetworkLayer.java:136)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.BIONetworkLayer.access$2200(BIONetworkLayer.java:48)
        at org.jenkinsci.remoting.protocol.impl.BIONetworkLayer$Reader.run(BIONetworkLayer.java:283)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
        at hudson.remoting.Engine$1.lambda$newThread$0(Engine.java:93)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener status
INFO: Connecting to testing-a.markwaite.net:8080
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener status
INFO: Server reports protocol JNLP4-plaintext not supported, skipping
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener status
INFO: Server reports protocol JNLP3-connect not supported, skipping
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener status
INFO: Server reports protocol JNLP2-connect not supported, skipping
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener status
INFO: Server reports protocol JNLP-connect not supported, skipping
Mar 02, 2019 3:49:29 PM hudson.remoting.jnlp.Main$CuiListener error
SEVERE: The server rejected the connection: None of the protocols were accepted
java.lang.Exception: The server rejected the connection: None of the protocols were accepted
        at hudson.remoting.Engine.onConnectionRejected(Engine.java:682)
        at hudson.remoting.Engine.innerRun(Engine.java:639)
        at hudson.remoting.Engine.run(Engine.java:474)