cicd infrastructure ai_generated true

Error: Agent 'build-agent-01' is offline

ID: cicd/jenkins-agent-offline

Also available as: JSON · Markdown
83%Fix Rate
85%Confidence
50Evidence
2023-01-01First Seen

Version Compatibility

VersionStatusIntroducedDeprecatedNotes
any active — — —

Root Cause

Jenkins build jobs are stuck waiting because the assigned agent node is offline, unreachable, or no agents match the required label. Builds queue indefinitely until an agent becomes available.

generic

Workarounds

  1. 87% success Check agent connectivity and restart the agent service on the node 
    SSH into the agent machine, verify the Jenkins agent process is running, check network connectivity to the controller, and restart the agent service: 'systemctl restart jenkins-agent'
  2. 90% success Configure cloud-based auto-scaling agents (Kubernetes, EC2, Docker) 
    Install the Kubernetes or EC2 Fleet plugin, configure a cloud agent template that auto-provisions agents on demand when builds queue. Set idle timeout to clean up unused agents

Dead Ends

Common approaches that don't work:

  1. Repeatedly restart the Jenkins controller to force agent reconnection 80% fail

    Controller restarts disrupt all running jobs and do not fix the underlying agent connectivity or provisioning issue

  2. Remove the agent label requirement from the pipeline 55% fail

    Running builds on any available node may cause failures due to missing tools, wrong OS, or insufficient resources

Error Chain

Leads to:
Preceded by:
Frequently confused with: