What does “Jenkins URL” means in configuration settings?

Question

On Jenkins configuration page in section \"Jenkins URL\" I\'ve set this option to \"http://name_of_my_machine.jenkins:8080/\" Usually I open jenkins by: \"http://localhost:8

Answer 1

Whenever Jenkins needs to create a URL that points to itself, Jenkins picks it up from the "Jenkins URL" setting in the global configuration.

Jenkins could try to guess the URL by e.g. getting the hostname and combining that with the port it is running on. But sometimes the hostname is not the same as the DNS name. And what if you have placed a front-end or proxy before Jenkins that e.g. terminates SSL connections and you would really like people to use Jenkins at https://company.com/jenkins/. Jenkins running in port 8080 cannot know about the front-end. The only reliable way for Jenkins to get the URL to itself is for an administrator setting it in Jenkins configuration.

Jenkins needs to know it's own URL when it is creating links that point back to itself. It does this e.g. when it sends out emails containing direct links to build results. Also, if you have a JNLP type slave, the slave initiates the connection to the master and the master returns a message which contains a link back to Jenkins for downloading the slave agent software.