The versioncolumn plugin can be configured to not mark the agent offline when the remoting version does not match the version on the Jenkins controller.

See JENKINS-63557 that announces the release of swarm client 3.23 (for Jenkins 2.249.1). You may need to remain with swarm plugin 3.22 on Jenkins 2.235.x

Hi Mark Waite,

thanks for the quick response!

I just want to make sure I fully understand - you are suggesting a "workaround" rather than a solution.

what I'm trying to say is that the remoting version should "behave" like the java version. it should offer at least some sort of validation mechanism and not provide a simple "check/don't check" mechanism for the specific remoting version.

shouldn't an agent with remoting version 4.5 be able to connect to a master with remoting version 4.3? I don't see a reason why it shouldn't (unless there are some breaking api changes, which means the agent should be versioned 5.something....

don't you agree?

Yes, I'm suggesting a work around. I agree that an agent running a newer version of remoting should be able to connect to an older remoting version on the Jenkins controller. I suspect that is an uncommon scenario, since most of the time the controller is upgraded before the agents are upgraded.

I don't understand why the jenkins controller should/would be upgraded before the agent. we are upgrading the plugins all the time to keep all the system up to date as much as possible.

since we are using swarm plugin massively, we keep it always up to date with the latest compatible version to the controller.

the last upgrade was a disaster to us since all the agent went offline immediately after the update...

anyway - thanks for the solution