Jenkins job does not execute on slave until user logs into the slave virtual machine

Question

Setup:

1. Master is on Windows VM "A"
2. Slave is on Windows VM "B"
3. Slave connects to master using java -jar agent.jar -jnlpUrl http://path/to/this/slave-agent.jnlp -secret thisisasecret -workDir "C:\\my-work-dir"
4. The Jenkins Job executes a batch command. The command runs Nunit console, which executes selenium tests

The Job that I'm executing is a selenium script, which opens a chrome instance on "B"

This is what I'm doing when it works:

1. Log into "B" using windows RDP
2. Open jenkins and trigger the selenium Job
3. I can see the Job executing on "B" and completes with no issues in about 4 minutes

This is when it DOES NOT work:

1. I DO NOT log into "B"
2. Open jenkins and trigger the selenium Job
3. Jenkins interface shows that the Job is executing but it runs indefinitely

Now if I log into "B" while the job is still running, as soon as I log in, I can see the chromedriver cmd appear and a chrome instance is brought up and the job is run and completes with no issues.

Does anybody know what could be causing this? Thanks!

Answer 1

We had tests that passed only when I was logged on the machine. Turned out that the test needed interactive desktop. In order to keep the session, you can make a bat file that you can use when you logout of the machine in order to keep the session interactive.

tscon %sessionname% /dest:console

Reference:
https://www.automatetheplanet.com/visual-studio-test-agents-cleaning-scripts/